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EXERCISES,

POLITICAL AND OTHERS.

By Lieut. Colonel T. Perronet Thompson,

Consisting of matter previously published with and without the author's
name, and of some not published before.

IN SIX VOLUMES.

VOL. 11.

Second Edition.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.

1843.

London : W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

PREFACE

TO ALL THE VOLUMES.

The first impression on review of this publication, part
of which dates from a considerable time back, is the very
slight degree in which circumstances are substantially
altered. Like the mounted sentries at the Horse Guards,
they might be taken for the same instead of a succession ; so
like in all important points is the nev^^ face of things to the old.
It may not be John, it may be Robert, whose feet are actually
in the stirrups ; but Robert and John are one, in the eyes of
the rustic spectator who looks only to the general effect.

Scarcely any great quarrel existed at the earliest period
referred to, of which the roots are not as much in the ground
as ever, though some of the stalks have been pulled up. The
argument on the Catholic Question, may be re-read with a trans-
ference to Church Monopolies of other kinds ; and the agitation
preceding the Reform Bill, may hold a lantern to show how
little has been accomplished, and how much thrown away.

In the department of Political Economy, something like a
manual for one side of the struggle at this moment at its
height, maybe collected from the subjects and quotations
introduced.

On what has obtained the name of the "Greatest-Happiness
Principle," a continued discussion will be found kept up.
The writer would be glad to think he had availed to make the
subject clearer, to any of those who profess to find difficulties
in the style or matter of the original propounder.

On the Military System of Napoleon, he has endeavoured to
collect and compress, what might be sought and perhaps missed,
in the pages of bulletins and the comments of friends and foes.
On some military questions of detail, articles and observations
will be found, v/hich must owe any interest, to having been
framed under the guidance of experiment, and published gene-
rally with some view to the advancement of the liberal cause.

On the principles of Geometry as connected with tlievexata
qucestio of the Theory of Parallels, inquiries will be found
which, like those of the alchemists, lead to useful results though
without implying a claim to general success. On the mathema-
tics of Music, observations and experiments will be met with,
which when the tide shall set in that direction, may be turned
to the improvement of the executive branch of Harmony.

The documents connected with Sierra Leone point to remark-
able facts in the history of that colony. The Treaty of January

a 2

Preface.

1820 in the Persian Gulph, is a transcript of the first public
act in which the Slave Trade was written down Piracy.

The " Letters of a Representative" were written to the
constituency of Hull, during a short period of sitting in par-
liament. That the consequence on the first opportunity was
permanent exclusion from the House of Commons, by the
exertions at different times and places of the leaders of almost
every class assuming the name of Liberals, may be not without
its value to such as may ever employ themselves in raking
among the characteristics of the times. Eight Conservatives,
with more or less directness, were introduced in part of pro-
cess ; of whom five were on the benches at once, making a
difference of ten upon the votes, being within two or three of
some of the majorities by which the Whigs were expelled
from office.

On Irish questions, the author has gone as close to the enemy,
as any sane leader could desire. The return made him, was
fierce attack from the " boys" of Kilkenny, when he was seen
ridden over as in the way of the compact by which three
kingdoms were turned over to the Tories.

Both in those Letters, and others to various portions of the
public press which follow, useful references will be found to
gone-by events, and to the feelings and arguments by which
they were attended. If proof is sometimes presented of the
prudence of dealing with enemies as if they were some day
to be friends, and with friends as if they were to be enemies,
there can be nothing surprising in finding a precept of anti-
quity confirmed by the experience of the passing hour.

On one point, an observation may be serviceable. The writer
adhered to the people called Chartists, till they denounced
him in their gazette and added the enormous childishness of
telling the House of Commons they wanted an edge tool and
wanted it to cut the givers' throats. On such adhesion, there
will of course be a diversity of opinions ; but there are always
enough to quit the party of the poor, the moment abiding by
it will make an unfavourable balance of twenty votes at an
election. The observation intended was, that much of what
the Chartists did not use, might be found cut and dried for any
other portion of the public, who should apply themselves to
compass a substantial and not a mock Reform.

To A. S., J. S., and S. B., Esqs., the survivors of the
friends mentioned in the Appendix, the thanks of the writer
are due, for the readiness with which they permitted the use
of Articles in which a mixture of hands was concerned.

Blackheatk, London, 1 August, 1842.

Index to all the Volumes.

VOL. I.

Page

Articles from the Westminster Review, 1829 — 1831 ; as follow.

Catholic Question (republished as " Catholic State JVaggon'"^ . 1
Berariger's Songs ........ 36

Absenteeism ......... 52

System of Fagging . . . . . . . .58

Banking .......... 63

Disabilities of the Jews . . . . . . .70

Poor Humphrey's Calendar ...... 79

Forty- Shilling Freeholders 82
Cor7i Laws ......... 87

QuipoSy or Peruvian Knot-Records . , . , . 96
Greatest- Happiness Principle.'' No. I. . . . . 121

Slavery in the West Indies . . . . • .136

Essays on the Pursuit of Truths ^c. , , . . .152
Desirableness of the Re-union of Belgium to France . . 165
Edinburgh Review andthe Greatest- Happiness Principle*" No. IT. 180

Free Trade 191

Radical Reform . . . . . . , .219

Edinburgh Review and the " Greatest- Haj^pitiess Princi2Jle."No.lll. 229
Taxes on Literature, The Six Acts" ..... 247

Le Reprtsentant des Peuples . . . . . , 26 1

Religious Disabilities . . . . . . ,269

Distress of the Coimtry . . . . . . .278

Great Britain cmd France ....... 287

Geoynetry without Axio^ns ....... 306

Revolution of ISZO . 313

Defensive Force . . . . . . . . 328

East-Itidia Trade ........ 344

Machine-Breaking ........ 353

European Revolution . . . . . . .373

Tratisactions of the Royal Asiatic Society . . , ,381
Parliamentary Reform . . . . . . .413

Poland and France . . . . . . . ,429

Annals and Jtitiquities of Rajast'han ..... 437

Military System of Napoleon ...... 440

Belgium and the Holy Alliance ...... 453

Quarterly Journal of Education ...... 462

Appel aux Reprtsentans de la France . . . . ,473

Prospects from Tory Reaction . . . . . ,478

Frogrammes to various Nos. to be found in their order,

vi Index to all the Volumes,

VOL. II.

Page

Articles from Westminster Review, 1832 — 1833 ; as follow.

Archbishop of Duhlin on Political Ecotiomy . , . . 1
Adjustment of the House of Peers . . . . .23

Saint- Simonimiism, &;c. . . . . . . ,34

Improvement of Conditio ji of the Clergy . . . ,75
Silk and Glove Trades ....... 95

Enharmonic of the Ancients • . . . . .99

French Commerce . . . . . . . .159

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy . . . . .167

Renewal of Bank Charter . . . . . . ,200

Supplement to Article on Silk and Glove Trades . . .218
Prosj)ccts of Reform ........ 225

McCulloch's Edition of the *' Wealth of Nations'^ . . . 238
Gardiner's Music of Nature ....... 282

Second Supplement to Article on Silk and Glove Trades . . 303
Wainewright's Vindication of Paley. Fort Rishan . . • 306
Supplement to Article on Reneioal of Bank Charter , . .314
Viscount Milton's Address to the Layidowners on the Corn Laws 316
The Fall of the Constitution . . . . . .320

Report of Secret Committee on Bank Charter . . . . 3 .i9

Harmonics of the Violin . . . . . . .337

Bishop of Bath and Wells on Commutation of Tithes . . 345
Colonel Torrens's Letters on Commercial Policy . . .351
Third Supplement to Article on Silk and Glove Trades . . 358
Policy, Justice, and Consequences of the Dutch War, . .368
Equitable Adjustment (with Tables by Mr. J. Childs of Bungay) . 374
Booth's Free Trade as it affects the People , . . . 392
Effects of Abolition and Commutation of Tithes . . .401
Fourth Supplement to Article on Silk and Glove Trades . . 406
Colonel Torrens's Additional Letters on Commercial Policy* . 409
Musical Periodicals . . . . . . . .414

Ireland . • . . . , . . . .417

Property Tax 433

^hew^Vs First Principles of Mechanics . . . .441

Nathan on the History and Theory of Music , . . .459
A Free Trader's Defence of the Mercantile System''^ . . 466
London University Magazine. Note on Austin's Jurisprudence . 479
Otto on the Violin . . . . . . . .482

Question of Absenteeism reducible to the Principles of Free Trade 486
Notes and Additions to various parts . . . . .496

Programmes to various Nos. to be found in their order.

Index to all the Volumes.

vii

VOL. III.

Articles from Westminster Review, 1834 — 1835, with Appendix; as

follow.

Page

Dr. Chalmers's Bridgetvater Treatise ..... 2
Jews* Harps, <^c. Life of Eulenstein ..... 22
Importance of Belgian Independence ..... 36
Econorny of paying twice over . . . . . .43

The Suffering Rich 70

Royal Society and M, Legendre ...... 79

Use of the Subjunctive Mood in English . . . .89

Impressment and Flogging ....... 93

Quarterly Review , S^c. in Support of Corn Monopoly . .100
Bentham's Deontology . . . . . . .108

Pamphlet in Modern Greek and French^ on Out-post Cavalry . 1 26
Do, on Telegraphers for Field Service^ horse and foot . .134
First Report of Messrs. Filliers and Bowring . . .137
Cat and Omnibus Nuisance . . . . . .148

Bordwiue^s Neio System of Fortification. . . . .153

John Hopkins on Political Economy . . . . .159

Enharmonic Organ . . . . . . . .165

Contre-Enquete . . . . . . . .177

Lady Morgan's Princess . . . . . . . 216

Jacquemont's Letters from India ..... 239

Table-Talk of S. T. Coleridge 248

Mrs. Loudon's Philanthropic Economy . • . .254

Woolhouse's Essay on Musical Intervals , ^c. . . .290
Programmes to various Nos. to be found in their order.

APPENDIX.

Instrument of Exchange ....... 295

Arabs and Persians . . . . . . . .344

Prospects of the Coloured Races . . . . . .406

SindiYVs Three Years in North America. . . . .416

Present Posture of Affairs . . , . . ,430

Banim's Canvassing ........ 447

Extract from Article on Military Law . . . .463

Extract from Article on Sugar without Slavery . . . 464
Miscellaneous Extracts from Westminster Review . . . 466

viii

Index to all the Volumes.

VOL. IV.

Page

Sierra Leone. — 1808 . . . . . . . .1

On Morals a^id Law. — 1813 . • . . . 4

What is a Constitution f — 1814 ...... 23

IVhat is a Rightful Government f — 1815 . . . .26

Treaty in Persian Gulph. 1820. (Copy in Arabic and English). 29
Correspondence on Slavery, S^c. (Arabic and English) . . 40
Respective Values of a good and bad Harvest. — 1830 . . 44
Letter to Earl Grey 07i the Adjustment of the House of Peers, — 1831 47
Letters of a Representative to his Constituents, during the Session

of 1836 . . 61

Do. during the Session of 1837 . . . . . . 195

Collections of Addresses, &c. 1831— ISiO .... 303

Lectures on various subjects . . . . . .365

The True Theory of Rent (Pamiihlet reifuhlished) . . .399
Catechism on the Corn Laws (Pamphlet republished) . . 459
Mirage on a Heated Wall in Greenwich Park . . . 580

VOL. V.

Letters to various Journals, between March 1840 and the end of

the year I

The Letters are orderly arranged, and the subjects stated
in the running head at the top of each page.

VOL. VI.

Letters to various Journals, in the years 1841 and 1842 . • 1
Addenda, Geometrical ....... 433

ERRATA.

In Vol. I, p. 368, line 'l^ifor nigh read high.

In Vol, XL p, 136, line 5, for Chapter XVII read Chapter XVIII.
p, 217, last word, for ou read no.

p. 224, head line, for Supplement to Article on read
Supplement to Article on Silk and Glove Trades.

In Vol. Ill, p. 97, bottom line, for Imprisonme^it read Impressment,
p, 175, line ZQ,for inferrible read inferible.
p. 292, line '11, for useully read usefully.
p, 433, line 35, dele * at the end.

In Vol. IV. p. 63, line 2, for 1838 read 1836.

p. 309, line 21, for 1837 read 1838.

In Vol. VI. p. 67 and p. 90, two Letters to the Editor of the Statesman
shoidd be transposed ; as is apparent from their dates.

END OF INDEX.

Programme to the Westminster Review for 1 January,
1832.

THE new Bill for Reform has been read a Second time
in the House of Commons, with a majority of votes which,
on comparison of the excess with the minority, may be stated
as being to the majority on the Second Reading of the former
Bill, as 17 to 10. Under such circumstances the Sibylline
books will be again presented to the Lords.

The outpost of Poland has been abandoned to destruction,
and that of Belgium withdrawn ; there is therefore no obstacle
to attempting the restoration of legitimacy on the continent,
except the possible agitation of the populace on the passage of
the Rhine. The commotions at Lyons have taken no political
turn ; and the students in medicine have been put down by the
garde munici/pale. So that on the whole, France may be said
to be waiting quietly for the Parisawski."

The second rejection of the English Reform Bill will probably
be the signal for a general attack on France and Belgium ; and
the British people will have the option of engaging in an in-
terminable war against freedom, or a Revolution. There can
be no doubt that a vast majority of the community considers
the last as beyond comparison the least evil of the two.

It is desired to say a few words on a book which has been
the subject of a review. The " Tour of a German Prince" con-
tains many passages not much more likely to have been the un-
aided production of a foreigner, than the *' Vicar of Wakefield."
His Highness either never blunders, or does it as much d
propos as the Chinese in the Citizen of the World, The only
palpable exception, is in the story of the romantic bookseller at
Monmouth ; and this may have been done by design, to keep
down the remainder. He displays an inexplicable knowledge,
for a German, of English and Irish society, and of what is found
to be piquant and interesting within its bounds. He describes
all this, and nothing else. No man ever heard anything ap-

VOL. II. . A

Archbishop of Dublin

proaching to it, from any tangible foreigner he has had the for-
tune to be acquainted with. Besides, it lacks Qermanity ; the
Germanisms in the whole are not greater than might be col-
lected in a three years' residence. The writer of the article was
requested on this point not needlessly to compromise interests
which were not his own ; and he only did it the more. There
was no necessity for entering on the question at all ; but since
it has been entered on, all that is asked is, that if in a year or
two the " Tour of a German Prince " should be avowed as the
production of a young Irishman of good family in foreign service
during his two years furlough, done into choice German by the
very able chaplain of his regiment, the jest may be against the
individual critic and not against the Westminster Review.
The book is a defence of the Irish Catholics, and a satire on the
Reformation Society ; and everything else is ornament and
garnish. As for " misrepresentation," — there would be as
much chance of charging De Foe with the non-existence of
Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner. The feelings of the
author on all subjects, are those of an Irish, not a German
patriot ; and even his doubles entendre are taken from the home
establishment. It would be good to have the extended opinion
of foreign judges, not on the German of the respectable chap-
lain, but the nationality of the author.

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1832.

Art. I. — Introductory i^ectures on Political Economy^ being Part of a
Course delivered in Easter Term, 1831. By Richard Whately,
D.D. Principal of St. Alban's Hall ; Professor of Political Eco-
nomy in the University of Oxford. — London. Fellowes. 1831,
8vo. pp. 238.

^"^HERE is a science of which the more it is studied the less
^ there is known ; a science, consequently, which is the gift
of nature in certain places, like the faculty of producing the
finer wines. It resembles poetry, in that its possessors are born
and not made; and woodcocks, in as much as the quantity is
not increasable by human art. This science is Political Eco-
nomy ; and the limit to which it is confined, is the Tory side of
the House of Commons.

Such at least is the account given by the owners, whenever
they can be induced to lay aside the modesty with which, like
the saints in scripture, they request to be informed when they
ever exercised the science at all. Betrayed by their humility
into the most graceful of mistakes, they require to be forced
into the acknowledgment, that in the least of the questions
which they have been in the habit of determining, they were
innocently political economists.

on Political Economy,

Many are the reasons which have led such well-meaning in-
dividuals into a dislike of any political economy but their own.
One of the most prominent was always, a religious scruple;
and great must be their mental consolation, when they are in-
formed by a theologian who has since become an archbishop,
that there is no necessary connexion between infidelity and any
portion of the science of exchanges.

There is in truth no more fatal symptom for the complex
system of ignorance and wrong which appears to be just now
tottering to its decease, than the impossibility under which the
enemy has laboured, of preventing me advance of knowledge
into the very fortresses of his strength. Vestra omnia im-
plevimus has become a lawful boast, when Oxford teaches
political economy, and mitred heads are among the prophets.
The common foe must fall, because his own recruits are taught
it is for their good that he should end. He will die off, like
the grosses perruques of our ancestors, because no efficient
number of individuals will feel interested in the continuation of
the species.

That a University, and one not considered as the most for-
ward in the cultivation of modem discoveries, should have pro-
duced an endowment so liberal and so well directed to the at-
tainment of its object as the Drummond Professorship of Poli-
tical Economy, and should further have been so fortunate in two
of the earliest occupants, — is perhaps a proof, and a consequence,
of the efficacy of the brilliant and well-directed sarcasm, which
represented academical institutions as given to perform the
office, like moored hulks, of marking the velocity of the pass-
ing stream. That such things were, is not for denial now ;
that they should in any degree have ceased to be, is honoura-
ble at once to the reprover and reproved.

The Professor of Political Economy at Oxford is bound,
under the directions of the enlightened founder, to publish at
least one Lecture every year ; and he has gone beyond the bond
to the extent of eight. Open but the way to honourable dis-
tinction, — set a man upon a hill and let him know that the
world's eyes are on him to determine that he was a fool because
he could not, or a knave because he would not, do something
great and splendidly useful to the community, — and neither
port nor prejudice will keep down the energies of the individuals
who will present themselves for the discharge of duty. The
danger is, of a man's being appointed to do nothing, with half
a dozen others to do it for him. This last is the ingenious
invention, by which office, lay and ecclesiastical, becomes a
sinecure.

In the brief Preface to the Lectures, the author protests

A 2

Archbishop of Dublin

against the irreligious fallacy ; which, it cannot be uncharita-
ble to conclude, he considered as in some sort indigenous to the
soil. And the same subject is entered on, in the body of the
Lectures.

* It has been my first object, to combat the prevailing prejudices
against the study; and especially those which represent it as unfavour-
able to Religion. Convinced as I am, that the world, as it always in
fact has been governed by political economists of some kind, must
ultimately be under the guidance of such as have systematically
applied themselves to the science, I could not but regard it as a point
of primary impoitance, to remove the impression existing in the
minds of many, both of the friends and the adversaries of Christianity,
as to the hostility between that and the conclusions of Pohtical
Economy,'

^ It was indeed, in great measure, this feeling, that induced me to
offer myself as a candidate for the Professorship. I considered my-
self, in this, to be contributing, as far as lay in me, to second what has
been done by the University of Oxford, towards counteracting the
false and dangerous impressions to which I have alluded.'

* By accepting the endowment of a Professorship of Political Eco-
nomy, the University may be regarded as having liorne her public
testimony against that prejudice ; and as having thus rendered an
important service to the public, independently of the direct benefits
resulting from the cultivation of the science. And subsequently, in
appointing to the Professorship one of her members, who is not only
professionally devoted to the Ministry of the Gospel, but whom she
has judged worthy (in the office of Bampton Lecturer, and three
times in that of Select Preacher) to offer religious instruction to an
academical audience, she has implied the full conviction of a Body
which is above all suspicion of indifference to Christianity, that there
is at least no discordancy between that and the pursuits of the poli-
tical economist. However slender may be my qualifications in the
science, (a science which no one, I conceive, has as yet fully
mastered,) the University has at least testified, in the appointment,
the most complete dissent from the notion, that the studies of Poli-
tical Economy and of Theology are unfriendly to each other.' —
Preface^ p. vi.

^ That Political Economy should have been complained of as hostile
to Religion, will probably be regarded a century hence (should the
fact be then on record) with the same wonder, almost approaching to
incredulity, with which we of the present day hear of men siucerely
opposing, on religious grounds, the Copernican system. But till the
advocates of Christianity shall have become universally much better
acquainted with the true character of their religion, than, universally,
they have ever yet been, we must always expect that every branch
of study, every scientific theory, that is brought into notice, will be
assailed on religious grounds, by those who either have not studied
the subject, or who are incompetent judges of it ; or again, who

on Political Economy.

are addressing themselves to such persons as are so ciicumstanced,
and wish to excite and to take advantage of the passions of the
ignorant.'—/?. 29.

The First Lecture is on the meaning and objects of Political
Economy. The objections to the name, are not particularly
fortunate ; especially as it is stated to be " too late to think of
changing it." Geometry, in its origin, evidently meant land-
surveying ; and it is of little consequence now, what it meant,
except as it may assist in the examination of the way in which
the intellect of man proceeded to the greater from the less. It
is certain that no direct light is thrown on the nature of Geo-
metry, by the information that it meant land-surveying ; and
equally little obscurity is likely to be shed on Political Eco-
nomy, by defects in its derivation. But the derivation itself, is
not so bad as is contended. The word " economy " had long
been used in other senses than that of " the regulation of daily
expenditure nor is this the primary signification after all,
which is that of " keeping a house in order." Two ladies have
contributed by instalments, the completest definition of Poli-
tical Economy. Mrs. Hannah Moore says, " A sound economy,
" is a sound understanding brought into action ; it is calcula-
" tion realized ; it is the doctrine of proportion, reduced to
** practice; it is foreseeing consequences, and guarding against

them ; it is expecting contingencies, and being prepared for
" them." And Mrs.Marcet adds, "You need only extend your
** idea of the economy of a family to that of a whole people — of
" a nation, and you will have some comprehension of the nature
" political economy."

But whatever be the name, the Professor is not disposed to
give way on the merits of his science.

' As for the vehement vituperation lavished on the study of Political .
Economy which you will be prepared to hear, though, of course, not
to answer, I will only remark, that I think it on the whole no unfa-
vourable sign. Invective is the natural resort either of those who are
incapable of sound reasoning altogether, or are at a loss for argiunents
to suit their present purpose : supposing-, that is^ of course, in each
case, as far as they are not withheld by gentlemanly or Christian
feeling. In proportiv)n therefore as any branch of study leads to im-
portant and useful results — in proportion as it gains ground in public
estimation — in proportion as it tends to overthrow prevailing errors —
in the same degree, it may be expected to call forth angry declama-
tion from those who are trying to despise what they wiil not learn,
and wedded to prejudices which they cannot defend. Galileo pro-
bably would have escaped persecution, if his discoveries could have
been disproved, and his reasonings refuted. The same spirit which
formerly consigned the too powerful dis['Utant to the dungeon or the
stake, is now, thank heaven, compelled to vent itself in railing ; which

Archbishop of Dublin

you need not more regard than the hiss of a serpent which has been
deprived of its fangs.' — p, J 6.

He proceeds to notice the " complaint urged against writers
on Political Economy for confining their attention to the subject
of Wealth." And this, he says, *' sounds very much Hke a com-
plaint against mathematicians for treating merely of quantities ;
or against grammarians for investigating no subject but lan-
guage." But there is a broader ground than this. Wealth
altogether, has been an ill-treated entity. There has been a
plot against it, at all events from the days of Nimrod. What
is wealth, but well-being f " In all time of our tribulation, in
all time of our wealth!'' It is true that in Political Economy
the term is restricted to such formulas or incorporations of well-
being, as may be secured, promoted, or attained, through the
possession of those objects of desire which carry with them a
generally admitted power of ministering to enjoyment, and as
such may be made the subjects of exchange. But what is there
that, directly or indirectly, is not affected from this source ? Is
health? — is poetry ?— is love ?— let a reward be offered for the
discovery of any human good, which has not the possession of
the means of bodily comfort, first or last, for an element. The
answer of the opponents is only, that these things cannot be
bought in the market by the ounce ; but the real question is,
whether the state of things which Political Economy concerns
itself with, is not the basis of them ail. Do the poor and mise-
rable suffer least by Cholera? Have there been many poets in
New Holland ? Do Abelards abound in Patagonia? Is a good
conscience peculiar to mendicity ? Does heroism flourish among
paupers? Is religious hope the distinguishing attribute of savage
life ? There is clearly a combination in the wind ; and the whole
is soluble on the recollection that the world is under the direc-
tion of two antagonist principles, the desire to keep, and the
desire to take away. The past history of mankind is in the
main a history of the conquests of the latter principle ; and it is
only in comparatively modern periods, that the other has made
head against its antagonist with any marked success. The
foreign and domestic policy of those who are styled the ancients,
may be summed up in the maxims that everything possible was
to be taken by force from foreign nations, and everything pro-
duced by the industrious at home was for this purpose to be at
the service of the takers. These were the classical definitions
of courage and patriotism ; and to this day they make great part
of the stock in trade of that band of men leagued together to
oppress, whom the country is in the act of endeavouring to
throw from off its shoulders. Why will nobody re-write the
Greek and Roman histories, and give us an insight into the

on Political Economy,

Toryism of antiquity ? The ignorance is awful. Respectable
gentlemen, in and out of parliament, suppose to this hour that
the Agrarian Law was an attempt at the division of private
property. Who has not been taught to believe, that the Grac-
chi were seditious ? Who knows anything about the Catilinarian
conspiracy, except that it was manifestly a plot in a green bag,
and Cicero a Tory Secretary for the Home Department ? What
was the exact nature of the combination, which had the future
Wellington of Rome, the youthful Csesar, among its connexions ?
And what was the real merit of the bugbear, so eminently con-
servative and ministerial, on the subject of the Allobroges? ,
All that is ordinarily known of the whole question, is just such
an approximation to the truth, as would be made by stating
that in the year 1820, certain men, to wit one Thistlewood and
others, of mere malice and at the simple instigation of the devil,
did without any connexion whatever with old disputes, or popu-
lar grievances, or accumulated sense of wrongs, and principally
with a view to overturn social order, combine and unite and
actually propose and proceed, to kill and slay the purest, the
kindest, the w^orthiest, and most excellent set of ministers that
any country had been blessed with within the memory of man.
No person can fail to be conscious of the immense mass of
matter for the historian, which would lurk behind such a repre-
sentation as this, whatever might be the quantum of guilt and
folly finally attributable to the individuals charged ; and just
so much there must be behind the conspiracy of Catiline.
Who, again, can tell anything about the pretended conspiracy
of the Bacchanalians ; which is stated to have had above seven
thousand members in Rome and other parts of Italy? In the
general tone of th« char^^'^c there is a strong resemblance to
those brought agains*"'^^

the Consul as given b} . . . o^^.^.i^.i iuui

political objects. Multitudes of both sexes were imprisoned
and put to death, on the evidence of a retired courtezan ; the
means by which the overthrow of the state had been pursued,
being represented to have been, *' false evidence, counterfeit
seals, and forged wills." So irresistible was the tyranny, that
the women were given up to their relations, with an intimation
that they must be put to death. The speech of the Consul is a
mass of Tory common places, and the whole charge bears every
internal mark of falsehood. The association must have been a
kind of Corresponding Society ; having in view to upset the
Pontifex Maximus, and roast the chickens in the sacred coops.
Nothing but what we are all acquainted with under the name

Book 39.

Archbishop of Dublin

of " zeal for social order,'' — in other words the eagerness to
defend against innovation some huge system of profitable wrong,
— can present a cause adequate to the declared effect ; and the
enactments to prevent the revival of the society, show the au-
thors of the Gagging-Bills had not gone to school for nothing.
The materials are confessedly scanty ; but if the Roman women
were the Itahan boy, there would be enough for Bow-Street to
trace the authors of the murder. The Greek literature has long
been a mine for digging up every kind of ancient abuse against
the people. These, and many more that might be adduced, are
instances of the obscure though not absolutely impervious me-
dium through which the present age views ancient history; and
at the head of these illusions, is the great illusion of all, oa
wealth and poverty. Wealth was to be discreditable, unmanly,
vituperate, because it was found greatly to indispose men to be
active thieves. Poverty was to be held in honour, when it
meant that kind of disengagement from worldly things, which
makes an Arab of the desert ready to place his services at the
disposal of any chief that proposes to rob a caravan. This is
the sorry explanation, of the ancient theory of heroic poverty.

The modern robber caste have no less objection to wealth
than the ancient. They tolerate it only as they are to have the
benefit. They know full well that the extension of the true
principles of wealth and commerce has the strongest imaginable
tendency to put down the trade of war and crime which is theirs
par excellence. The " fighting-cock" principle which trains men
to act against their fellows whenever the chiefs at home shall
think other nations too free or happy for good example, would
receive its death's blow from such a spread of knowledge. That
there will never be another commercial war, is already assuming
almost the power of an axiom ; to the loss and horror of " per-
sons of sound principles" throughout the world.

^ As for the latter part of the objection above noticed, that men are
already too eager in the pursuit of wealth, and ought not to be en.
couraged to make it an object of attention, the mistake on which it
proceeds is one which you will meet with only in the younof, (I mean,
either in years, or in character,) and which you will readily remove
in the case of those who are even moderately intelligent and attentive.
You may easily explain to them that Political Economy is not the art
of enriching an individual, but relates to Wealth generally ; — to that
of a nation, and not to that of an individual, except in those cases
where his acquisition of it goes to enrich the community. You may
point out to them that wealth has no more necessary connexion with
the vice of covetousness, than with the virtue of charity ; since it
merely forms the subject-matter about which the one as well as the
other of these is concerned: and that investigations relative to the
nature^ production, and distribution of wealth, have no greater con-

on Political Economy,

nexion with sordid selfishness, than the inquiries of the chemist and
the physiologist respecting the organs and the process of digestion
and absorption of nutriment, have with gluttonous excess. And you
may add, that individuals the most destitute of systematic knowledge,
and nations not only ignorant but comparatively poor, are at least as
prone to avarice as any others. The Arabs are among the poorest,
and the most covetous, of nations; and most of those savage tribes,
who have not even the use of money, are addicted to pilfering and
plunder of every thing that is wealth to them.' — p. 25.

The same subject is found continued in the Second Lec~
ture.

* You will hear it said indeed, with undeniable truth, that wealth
is not necessarily a benefit to the possessor. No more is liberty, or
health, or strength, or learning. But again you will also meet with
some who contend, that a poor country is more favourably situated for
virtue than a rich one ; and with others who, without going this length,
maintain, that as with individuals, so with nations, a certain degree oi
wealth is desirable, but an excess, dangerous to the moral character.
Either or both of these points, you may concede for the present ; i. e.
waive the discussion of them, as far as regards the question concerning
the importance of the study we are speaking of. For if it be granted
that we are to dread as an evil the too great increase of national
wealth, or, that wealth is altogether an evil ; still, it is not the less
necessary to study the nature of wealth, its production, the causes
that promote or impede its increase, and the laws which regulate its
distribution. We should go to the fountain-head of the waters, whe-
ther we wish to spread them abundantly over our land, or to drain
them entirely away, or to moderate and direct the irrigation. If
wealth, or great wealth, be regarded as a disease, we should remem-
ber that bodily diseases are made the subject of laborious and minute
inquiry by physicians, as necessary with a view to their prevention
and cure. Formerly, nearly all practitioners recommended inoculation
with small-pox ; though the practice had been much opposed at its
first introduction ; now, they are almost unanimous in preferring vac-
cination ; but in any stage of either of the controversies which arose
respecting these modes of practice, a man would have been thought
insane, who should have questioned the importance of studying the
nature, symptoms, and effects of small-pox.'

* As for the doctrine itself, that national wealth is morally mis-
chievous as introducing luxury, (in the worst sense of the word,) effe-
minacy, profligacy of manners, and depravation of principle, ii has
been inculcated in a loose declamatory way, by a great number of
moralists, who have depicted in glowing colours the amiable simplicity
of character, the manly firmness, and the purity of conduct, to be
met with in nations that continue in primitive poverty ; and the dege-
neracy that has ensued in those which have emerged from this state
into one of comparative wealth. Almost all these writers furnish a
strong confirmation of what has been just advanced; viz. that whether
wealth be a good or an evil, or each, according to the amount of it— •

Archbishop of Dublin

on any supposition, it is still no less a matter of importance to exa-
mine and carefully arrange the facts relating to the subject, and to
reason accurately upon it, if we would avoid self-contradiction. For
you will often find men declaiming on the evils consequent on wealth,
and yet, in the next breath, condemning or applauding this or that
measure, according to its supposed tendency to impoverish or to en-
rich the country. You will find them not only readily accepting wealth
themselves from any honourable source, and anxious to secure from
poverty their children and all most dear to them ; (for this might be
referred to the prevalence of passion over principle ;) but even offering
up solemn prayers to heaven for the prosperity of their native country ;
and contemplating with joy a flourishing condition of her agriculture,
manufactures, or commerce ; in short, of the sources of her Wealth.
Nor is even this the utmost point to which you will find some carry
their inconsistency; for you will meet with objections to Political Eco-
nomy, (meaning thereby either some particular doctrines maintained
by this or that writer, or else, all systematic attention to the subject,)
on the ground that it has for its object the increase of wealth, which
is hurtful ; and again, that a country which is governed according to
its principles, is likely to be impoverished by them. Now the most
erroneous doctrines in Political Economy that ever were promulgated,
(and very erroneous ones certainly have prevailed,) can hardly be
chargeable with both these consequences. The same system cannot
at once tend to make us rich, and also to make us poor.'— p. 40.

' Many measures indeed have been advocated, which really tend to
impoverish the country — many opposed, which tend to enrich it ; but
never, on those grounds. It has been always from their tendency
being, at least professedly, understood to be the reverse. Much lavish
expenditure again has often been recommended for inadequate ob-
jects ; but always on the ground that the object was adequate. I
never heard of any one, even of those who in theory deprecate the
increase of national wealth as an evil, being consistent enough in
practice to advocate any measure on the ground that it tends to destroy
wealth, and for that express purpose ; or to oppose a measure on the
ground that it will too much enrich the country. The fact is, the
declaimers against wealth are, by their own showing, mere declaira-
ers, and nothing more ; who, rather than say nothing, will say what
militates against their own conclusions. They recommend or oppose
measures, as conducive, or as adverse, to national wealth : and then if
their arguments are tried by the test of well-i-stablished principles,
and they are exhorted systematically to study these principles, and,
before they attempt to discuss questions connected with wealth, to
bestow a regular attention on the subject, they turn round and inveigh
against such a study because it has wealth for its subject, and wealth
is a pernicious thing : which would not lessen the importance of such
studies, if it were true ; and which they themselves have practically
admitted, is not true.' — p, 61.

This is all so good, that it would he wicked to try to add to
it. Luxury, as has heen intimated before, meant with the

on Political Economy, 1 1

ancients nothing but an inaptitude to become the tools of
plunderers.

In the Third Lecture, the practical fraud involved in the
appeals continually put forward to common sensCy is not
elucidated with perfect success till after several efforts ; though
it cannot be denied that it is done effectually in the end.
Common sense means only the degree of sound judgment which
is common to mankind ; and when a fraud is supported by an
appeal to common sense, the snare will always be found to lie
in the selection of the data on which the exercise of the faculty
is requested. Thus if an Englishman can make gloves for
three shillings a pair, and it is clear his trade must be put down
if his countrymen are allowed to buy gloves of the same quality
from foreigners for two^ — the question thrust forward for the
decision of common sense, is whether it is just and politic that
an Englishman's trade shall be put a stop to. But garnish
the question with all the concomitant facts, — state that the
trade of this Englishman is created by the destruction of the
trade, first of some Englishman to the amount of the goods that
would be required to purchase the gloves from foreigners, and
secondly of some other to the amount of the difference (the one
shilling) which would have been laid out on him by the con-
sumer of the gloves if it had been left in his possession, and that
in addition to all this there is the clear and unbalanced loss.of one
shilling to the consumer, so that if all men could be consumers
under the same circumstances in theu' turn, there would be a
loss of the same kind as if they should agree to throw a shilling
each into the sea ; — let all this be stated, and then ask what ver-
dict common sense will give upon the question, and in what
clime, or district, or parish, an individual will be found suffi-
ciently idiotic to stand out for the reasonableness of the pro-
ceeding. The supporters have a sinister purpose, their own
gain ; and they trust to being able to persuade their neighbours
to adjudge the question on their showing. They run about
with half a watch, and insist on men's going to bed because the
hands point to midnight.

^ There is no fear that we shall ever in practice have too little call
for deliberation — too little need of judicious conjecture. Science
does not enable us to dispense with common-sense, but only to employ
it more profitably ; nor does the best-instructed man necessarily de-
liberate the less; only he exercises his deliberation on different points
from those that occupy the less-instructed ; and to better purpose.' —
p. 70.

^ In matters connected with Political Economy, the experience of
practical men is often appealed to in opposition to those who are called
theorists ; even though the latter perhaps are deducing conclusions

Archbishop of Dublin

from a wide induction of facts, while the experience of the others
will often be found only to annount to their having been long conver-
sant with the details of office, and having all that time gone on in a
certain beaten track, from which they never tried, or witnessed, or
even imagined, a deviation.' — p. 74.

' It may be added, that there is a proverbial maxim which bears
witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an observant by-
stander over those actually engaged in any transaction. " The
looker-on often sees more of the game than the players." Now the
looker-on is precisely (in Greek ©tcooog) the theorist,^

' When then you find any one co?itrasting, in this and in other subjects,
what he calls experience, with theory, you will usually perceive on
attentive examination that he is in reality comparing the results of a
confined^ with that of a wider ^ experience ; — a more imperfect and
crude theory, with one more cautiously framed, and based on a more
copious induction.' — p. 74.

The same individuals that affix such narrow bounds to com-
mon sense, have however no objection to theories, when they
happen to be their own.

* The illustrations which I have given from other subjects are ex-
tremely inadequate ; for I know of none in which so much theory,
and that, most paradoxical theory, has been incorporated with expe-
rience, and passed off as a part of it, as in matters concerning Political
Economy. There is no other in which the most subtle refinements of
a system (to waive, for the present, the question as to its soundness)
have been, not merely admitted, but admitted as the dictates of com-
mon-sense. Many such paradoxes, as 1 allude to, (whether true or false,
we will not now consider,) you may meet within a variety of authors of
the present, but much more of the last and preceding centuries ; and
may not unfrequently hear in conversation. That a state of war is
favourable to national prosperity — that it is advantageous to a nation to
export goods of more value than it receives in return— that we are
losers by purchasing articles where we can get them cheapest — that it
is wise for a people to pay, on behalf of a foreign consumer, part of
the price for which he purchases their commodities — that it is better
to obtain the same results by much labour than by little — that a man
is a benefactor to the community by building himself a splendid
palace — and many other doctrines that are afloat, may be truths, but .
they are at least paradoxical truths ; — they may be abstruse and recon-
dite wisdom ; at any rate, they are abstruse and recondite ; — they may
be sense, but at least they are not common-sense.^

^ And again, many conclusions maintained by men who have had
much experience, of one kind or other, though they may be just con-
clusions, yet cannot be said to have been brought to the test of expe-
rience. For instance, that a country would be enriched, by having,
what is called, a favourable balance of trade with all the world, i. e.
by continually exporting more in value than the goods it imports, and
consequently receiving the overplus year by year in money, and ex-
porting none of that money — this has been held by a great number of

on Political Economy. 13

men, long conversant with public affairs, and so far, men of experience.
But the doctrine itself, whether true or false, cannot be said to have
been established by experience, because the experiment has never
been tried. Many, indeed, have tried, for ages together, to bring about
such a state of things; but as it is notorious, that they have never
succeeded— that no country ever has been so circumstanced — the experi-
ment cannot be said to have ever been tried what would be the conse-
quences of attaining such an object ; nor can they therefore be said,
(however right they may be as to the desirableness of the object,) to
know by experience that it is conducive to prosperity. Such experi-
ments, therefore, are like those of the Alchemists, who did indeed try
innumerable, with a view to discover the philosopher's stone ; but can-
not be said to have tried the experiment, whether that stone which
converts all things into gold, is, or is not, a universal medicine. That it
is possible to find a method of transmuting metals, and that it would
be connected with the art of healing, has never been disproved ; but
one who believes this, however rightly, cannot be said to found his
belief on experience.' — p. 78.

^ 1 shall proceed to offer a few remarks on that very prevailing idea,
that Political Economy is a subject which may be studied by anyone
whose taste particularly leads him to it, but which (with the excep-
tion perhaps of a few who take a leading part in public affairs) may
safely be disregarded by the generality, as by no means necessary to
make up the character of a well-educated man.'

' It may perhaps be conceded, that each should regulate his studies
according to his own judgment and inclination, provided he will con-
sent to refrain from taking a part in matters to which he has not
directed his attention : but this at least seems an equitable condition :
" Ludere qui nescit^ campestribus abstinet armis.^^ It is a condition,
however, which in the present subject is very little observed. The
most difficult questions in Political Economy are every day discussed
with the most unhesitating confidence, not merely by empty pre-
tenders to Science, (for that takes place, and must be expected, in all
subjects,) but by persons not only ignorant, but professedly ignorant,
and designing to continue so, of the whole subject ; — neither having,
nor pretending to have, nor wishing for, any fixed principles by which
to regulate their judgment on each point. Questions concerning tax-
ation, tithes, the national debt, the poor laws — the wages which labour-
ers earn, or ought to earn, — the comparative advantages of different
modes of charity, and numberless others belonging to Political Eco-
nomy, and many of them among the most difficult, and in which there
is the greatest diversity of opinion, are debated perpetually, not merely
at public meetings, but in the course of conversation, and decisions of
them boldly pronounced, by many who utterly disclaim having turned
their attention to Political Economy. The right management of pub-
lic affairs in respect of these and such like points, is commonly
acknowledged to call for men of both powerful and well-cultivated
mind ; and yet if every man of common sense is competent to form an
opinion, at the first glance, on such points, without either having
made them the subject of regular study, or conceiving that any such

Archbishop of Dublin

is requisite, it would follow that the art of j2^overnment (as far at least
as regards that extensive and multifarious department of it, pertain-
ing to National Wealth) must be the easiest of all arts ; — easier than
even the common handicraft trades, in which no one will knowingly
employ a man who has not been regularly taught. And the remark
of the Chancellor Oxenstiern to his son, " quam parvd sapientid regi-
tur mundus,'^'' must be understood to apply not only to what is, but to
what ought to be, the state of things.'

^ Many of you probably have met with the story of some gentle-
man, (I suppose it is usually fathered on a native of a neighbouring
island,) who, on being asked whether he could play on the violin,
made answer, that he really did not know whether he could or not,
because he had never tried. There is at least more modesty in this
expression of doubt, than those show, who, having never tried to
learn the very rudiments of Political Economy, are yet quite sure of
their competence to discuss its most difficult questions.'

^ You may perhaps wonder how it is that men should conceal from
themselves and from each other so glaring an absurdity. I believe it
is generally in this way :- — they profess and intend to keep clear of all
questions of Political Economy ; and imagine themselves to have
done so, by having kept clear of the names. The subjects which con-
stitute the proper and sole province of the science, they do not scruple
to submit to extemporaneous discussion, provided they but avoid the
title by which that science is commonly designated. This is as if the
gentleman in the story just alluded to had declared his inability to
play on the violin, at the same time expressing his confidence that he
could play on the fiddle.' — p. 83.

* What is the modern school of Political Economy, I cannot dis-
tinctly ascertain ; nor (it is evident) can those who find fault with it;
since one of their complaints is, that no such thing exists, and that,
on the contrary, the greatest discrepancy prevails between the differ-
ent authors who profess to teach the science. If there be, however,
any points on which, notwithstanding their general discrepancy, most
of these writers agree, that is certainly a strong presumption that
they are right in those points. It is, however, only a presumption ;
not a decisive argument ; since we know, that there are several points
in which various philosophers agreed for many ages, yet in which it
has since appeared that they were all mistaken.'

^ In fact, however, it will be found, that even much greater discre-
pancy than is alleged, does exist among political economists, if we
include, as we certainly ought to do, under that description, not
merely those who usually bear the appellation, but all who discuss,
and in practice decide, questions connected with national wealth ; —
all who recommend or adopt measures which have that object in
view. All such are, properly, political economists ; .though many of
them may be very bad ones. Those of them who may have never
carefully and systematically studied the subject, whether they are in
consequence the less likely, or the more likely, to arrive at right con-
clusions, yet do adopt some conclusions, and act upon them. Now a
man is called a Legislator who frames and enacts laws, whether they

on Political Economy,

be wise or unwise; — whether he be by nature, or by his studies, well
or ill qualified for his task. A man who attends sick persons, and
prescribes fur them, is called a Physician, whether he prescribe skil-
fully or not, and whether he have carefully, or negligently, studied
anatomy, pharmacy, and nosology. So also, men are usually called
Generals, and Magistrates, who are entrusted, respectively, with the
command of armies, and with the administration of justice ; however
incompetent they may be to those offices : else we should never
speak of an unskilful General, or an ignorant Magistrate. And on
the same principle, one who forms opinions, and frames or discusses
measures, relative to the matters we are now speaking of, is a Politi-
cal Economist ; though he is likely to be a bad one, if he does so
ignorantly, and at random. But in respect of this particular case of
Political Economy, many men are in the condition of the Bourgeois
of Moliere, who had been talking prose all his life without knowing
it.'—p. 87.

The Lecturer charitably wishes there was no such thing as
Political Economy. And this opens out the important fact,
that Political Economy might not unreasonably be defined,
the art of preventing ourselves from being plundered by our
betters. It is the grand expositor of the peccadilloes of those
who volunteer to benefit mankind by governing ; its professors
form the great Anti-felony Association of modern times. It
picks up swindlers of all calibres, as the Roc does elephants ;
and is a very ferret to the vermin that nestle in our barns and
manufactories. The archbishop does not say all this in what
next follows ; he only means it.

' I wish for my own part there were no such thing as Political
Economy. I mean not now the mere name of the study : but I wish
there had never been any necessity for directing our attention to the
study itself. If men had always been secured in person and property,
and left at full liberty to employ both as they saw fit ; and had merely
been precluded from unjust interference with each other — had the
most perfect freedom of intercourse between all mankind been always
allowed — had there never been any wars — nor (which in that case
would have easily been avoided) any taxation — then, though every
exchange that took place would have been one of the phenomena of
which Political Economy takes cognizance, all would have proceeded
so smoothly, that probably no attention would ever have been called
to the subject. The transactions of society would have been like the
play of the lungs, the contractions of the muscles, and the circulation
of the blood, in a healthy person ; who scarcely knows that these
functions exist. But as soon as they are impeded and cnsordered,
our attention is immediately called to them. Indeed one of these
functions did exist for several thousand years before it was even sus-
pected. It is probable that (except perhaps among a small number
of curious speculators) anatomy and physiology would never have
been thought of, had they not been called for in aid of the art of

Archbishop of Dublin

medicine ; and this, manifestly, would have had no existence, but for
disease. In like manner it may be said to have been diseases, actual
or apprehended — evils or imperfections, real or imaginary, that in
the first instance directed the attention of men to the subjects about
which Political Economy is conversant: the attention, I mean, not
only of those who use that term in a favourable sense, but of those
no less who hold it in abhorrence, and of our ancestors who never
heard it. Many, no doubt, of those evils have been produced or ag-
gravated by the operation of erroneous views of Political Economy;
just as there are many cases in which erroneous medical treatment
has brought on, or heightened diseases ; but in these, no one will
deny that it is from correct medical views we must hope for a cure.'

* And you may add this remark ; that the greater part of those who
do in this way induce disease, are such as make no pretensions to the
medical art, nor entertain any respect for it; they are often the fore-
most to declaim against the folly of trusting in physicians — of dosing
one's self with medicines — of tampering wiih the constitution ; and
think themselves secure from any such folly, as long as they abstain
from the use of any thing that is called a medicine ; while perhaps
they are actually tampering with their constitution by an excessive
use of spirituous liquors, or of other stimulants, not bearing the name
of medicines, but not the less powerful in their elFects on the human
frame. In like manner, you may observe, many have ventured boldly
on measures tending to produce the most important results on na-
tional wealth, without suspecting that these had any thing to do with
Political Econom}^, because the name of the science was carefully
avoided. Buonaparte detested that name. When he endeavoured
by all possible means to destroy the commerce of the continent with
this country — means which brought on ultimately the war which
ended in his overthrow — there is no doubt he believed himself to be
not only injuring us, but consulting the best interests of his own
dominions. Indeed, the two ideas were with him inseparable ; for
all that he himself had ever acquired having been at the expense of
others, he could not understand how we could gain, except by their
loss. Yet all the while, he was in the habit of saying that Political
Economy, if an empire were of granite, would crumble it to dust.
That erroneous Political Economy may do so, he evinced by the ex-
periment he himself tried : but to the last he was not aware that he
had been in fact practising such a system : — had been practising
Political Economy in the same sense in which a man is said to be
practising Medicine, unskilfully, who through ignorance prescribes
to his patient a poisonous dose.' — p. 92.

* Anatomy and Physiology, though, as I have said, they probably
owe their rise to Medicine, as that did to disease, are yet universally
acknowledged to be among the most curious and interesting studies,
even for those who have no design to apply them professionally in
the practice of medicine. In particular, they are found, the more
they are studied, to throw more and more light on the stupendous
wisdom of contrivance which the structure of organized bodies dis-
plays ; — in short, to furnish a most important portion of Natural

on Political Economy,

Theology. And it might have been anticipated, that an attentive
study of the constitution of Society, should bring to ligbt a no less
admirable apparatus of divinely-wise contrivances, directed no less to
beneficial ends ; — that as the structure of a single bee is admirable,
and still more so that of a hive of bees, instinctively directing their
efforts towards a common object, so, the Divine Maker of the human
body, has evinced no less benevolent wisdom in his provisions for the
progress of society ; — and that though in both cases the designs of
Divine Wisdom are often counteracted by human folly — by intem-
perance or neglect, as far as relates to the body — and by mistake or
fraudj in respect of the community — still, in each case, attentive study
may enable us to trace more and more the designs of a wise Pro-
vidence, and to devise means for removing the impediments to their
completion.' — p. 96.

The Fourth Lecture is on the connexion of Political Economy
with Natural Theology, which has already been suggested in
the last extract. And as it is reviving to see a great soldier
take the side of liberty, so is it cheering to view an eminent
theologian heading the advance of human knowledge in his
proper department, and shedding intolerable light upon the
puny bigots that burrow into the mantle of religion for their
own teazing purposes of spoil. It is quite true that the com-
mercial like the physical world, is '* fearfully and wonderfully
made." The same result will probably be established of the
political, when there has been time to witness a few more of
its revolutions. The advancement of mankind in all these
divisions of well-being, is by every reasonable inference the
design of Providence. What a difference between such a con-
clusion in the mouth of a theologian, and the episcopal exhor-
tations that have been parodied in satiric rhymes ; and how
small would ever have been the danger of the bench of bishops, if
they had possessed the grace to go and do likewise.

The whole parable of the head-commissary [pp, 103 to 111]
is exceedingly admirable and instructive, and in fact one of
the tnost beautiful pieces of Sunday reading it ever fell to the
lot of the Westminster Review to recommend. The passage
upon corn-dealers will be extracted, for its bearing on a point
on which the little vulgar are apt to show they can compete in
folly with the great. The sentence immediately preceding,
was on the necessity of raising prices and keeping back the
supply from market in a time of scarcity.

' For doing this, corn-dealers in particular are often exposed to
odium, as if ihey were the cause of the scarcity ; whi-e in reality they
are performing the important service of husbanding the .supply in
proportion to its deficiency, and thus warding off the calamity of
famine ; in the same manner as the commander of a garrison or a

VOL. II. B

Archbishop of Dublin

ship, regulates the allowances according to the stock and the time it
is to last. But the dealers deserve neither censure for the scarcity
which they are ignorantly supposed to produce, nor credit for the im-
portant public service which they in reality perform. They are merely
occupied in getting a fair livelihood. And in the pursuit of this object,
without any comprehensive wisdom, or any need of it, they co-operate,
unknowingly, in conducting a sy>item which, we may safely say, no
human wisdom directed to that end could have conducted so well : —
the system by which this enormous population is fed from day to
day.'—;?. 107.

The principal object of the Lecture, however, is to impress
generally, the proofs of benevolent design which may be de-
rived from Political Economy.

' And here I must take occasion to remark, that I do not profess to
explain why things were so ordered, that any advancement at all
should be needful ; — why mankind were not placed at once in a state
of society as highly civilized as it was destined ever to be. The rea-
sons for this are probably unfathomable by us in this world. It is
sufficient for our present purpose merely to remark the fact, that the
apparent design of Providence evidently is^ the advancement of man-
kind, not only as Individuals, but as Communities. Nor again do I
profess to explain, why in so many particular instances causes have
been permitted to operate, more or less, towards the frustration of this
general design, and the retardation, or even reversal, of the course of
improvement. The difficulty in fact is one which belongs, not to this
alone, but to every branch of Natural Theology. In every part of the
universe we see marks of wise and benevolent design ; and yet we see
in many instances apparent frustrations of this design ; we see the
productiveness of the earth interrupted by unfavourable seasons — the
structure of the animal frame enfeebled, and its functions impaired,
by disease — and vast multitudes of living Beings, exposed, from various
causes, to suffering, and to premature destruction. In the moral and
political world, wars, and civil dissention — tyrannical governments,
unwise laws, and all evils of this class, correspond to the inundations—
the droughts — the tornados, and the earthquakes, of the natural
world. We cannot give a satisfactory account of either ; — we can-
not, in short, explain the great difficulty, which, in proportion as
we reflect attentively, we shall more and more perceive to te the
only difficulty in theology, the existence of evil in the Universe.' —
p. 113.

The same point is urged in the following extract from the
Seventh Lecture ; which may properly be introduced in this
place.

* And here, again, we may perceive the benevolent wisdom of
Providence, in not making the public good d( pendent on pure
pu\»lic-spirit. He who labours to acquire, and then to communicate,
important knowledge, solely, or principally, with a view to the benefit

on Political Economy,

of his fellow-creatures, is a character more admirable than it is com-
mon. Knowledge would not have made the advances it has, if it had
been promoted only by such persons. Far the greater part of it may
be considered as the gift, not of human, but of divine, benevolence ;
which has implanted in man a thirst after knowledge for its own sake,
accompanied with a sort of instinctive desire to impart it. For I think
there is in man, independent ofthe desire of admiration, (called, in its
faulty excess. Vanity ,)vfh\ch. is a must powerful stimulus to the acqui-
sition and propa^jation of knowledge — independent of this, I say, there
is, connected with the desire of gaining knowledge, a desire (founded,
I imagine, on Sympathy) of communicating it to others, as an ulti-
mate end. This, and also the love of display, are, no doubt, inferior
motives, and will be superseded by a higher principle, in proportion as
the individual advances in moral excellence. These motives consti-
tute, as it were, a kind of scaffolding, which should betaken down by
little and little, as the perfect buildmg advances, but which is of in-
dispensable use till that is completed. To these inferior motives then,
(which those who delight in degrading human nature, by applying to
each propensity a name implying something faulty or contemptible,
would call, Curiosity and Vanity,) — to these, with an intermixture
greater or less of higher motives, we owe the chief part of the progress
of society in knowledge.' — -p. 175.

The Fifth Lecture contains a disputable theory ; but one that
only remotely involves any practical inferences. The theory
alluded to, is that men never did nor can raise themselves from
a state of complete barbarism, without instruction and assist-
ance from people already civilized ; from which it is concluded,
that civilization must have been the effect of a supernatural
revelation made to some portion of the human species, and that
all savages must originally have degenerated from a more civil-
ized state of existence. Of this degeneration, the Lecturer thinks
there is little reason to doubt, that the principal cause has been
War. Objections may be urged to the theory, without ques-
tioning any of the authorities to which the author refers. The
only notices of arts furnished by the record of Genesis [as noted
by the author in p. 139] consist of two, — the working of metal?,
and the construction of musical instruments ; and in neither
case is there any intimation of supernatural instruction. Some
appearance of an opposite nature might be held to be contained
in the mention made of "coats of skins but the author him-
self has not considered this as ground whereon to found an
argument. If knowledge came originally by inspiration, the
chosen race contrived to carry away very little ofthe benefit.
The inhabitants of Egypt had far outstripped them, when their
patriarchs entered that house of bondage ; or Moses would never
' have been celebrated as " learned in all the wisdom of the

B 2

Archbishop of Dublin

Egyptians.*' Many ages afterwards, Solomon or his historians
knew no nearer proportion of the circumference of a circle to
the diameter, than that of three to one*. There was no neces-
sity for saying what the circumference was at all ; and a writer
who had known that the circumference of a circle of ten cubits
diameter was on a rough estimate thirty-one cubits and a half,
would never have volunteered asserting it was thirty. It is
scarcely credible that a native of New Holland should not know
that the girt of a tree is more than three times its thickness.
Whatever Solomon might have done for botany or zoology, it
is clear he had not done much for the geometry of his subjects.
But there is an objection of a more general nature Is not all
improvement under the direction of divine providence ; and
could not the same agency that without a miracle led man to
the Newtonian Theory, lead him to [as instanced by the author
in p. 139] fire f There are races that have not yet learned to
boil ; and in a temperate climate well stored with vegetable pro-
ductions, it is undeniable that man might exist for some time
without having learned to roast. In such a situation there is
no absolute necessity for fire. The children of Israel have been
pourtrayed with musquets ; but no painter ever thought of light-
ing a fire in paradise. And if a diminution of man's comforts
accompanied his fall, there is nothing unphilosophical in
believing it might be such a change as he could live through
without a miracle. Lightning and volcanoes might be phse-
nomena from which an early-world philosopher would be most
likely to run away ; but a conflagration of the brush-wood,
v/hich might arise from either of these without his knowledge,
would afford an opportunity of learning the warming property
of fire, which the Orang Outan is said to profit by, though his
limited intellect does not go the length of prolonging the flame.
But besides these accidental sources, in several parts of the
world there are natural gas-lights ; and if the habitual use of
fire should have begun near one of these, it would at all events
be nothing supernatural. There are traces of the fact, that fire
from this precise source was carried to great distances, and pre-
served with excessive care ; and there is no improbability in this
having had its origin in necessity. The first use of fire would
be to warm ; but after it had been habitually applied to this
purpose, no miracle would be required to roast a chestnut, or to
produce that odour of terrified flesh or fish which acts with such
irresistible invitation on the organs of the hungry. And when
men had arrived at this point, the discovery of the diff'erent

* 1 Kings, vii. 23. 2 Chron. iv.2.

on Political Economy.

means of kindling fire without the trouble of carrying it about,
might safely be left to time ; — there appearing no more abso-
lute necessity for the primitive method of rubbing two sticks
together being taught supernaturally, than for the last- invented
" Promethean." In the chosen instance of fire, therefore, there
is no nodus worthy of supernatural interference.

The weakness of the Lecturer's argument appears to be, that
he has shown no necessity for the supernatural origin of any
one of the arts which make the difference between civilized men
and savages. And if it was claimed for any of the arts which
are held in common with savages, it is difficult to see how that
would prove the supernatural origin of civilization. The moral
objection — for there is one — is that civilized man is already
sufficiently disposed to set himself above his less fortunate
brother. There is no necessity to teach a European planter,
that he is a glazed pipkin of inspiration, which has oozed out
through the leaky bottom of his slave.

The Sixth Lecture contains most useful dissertations on the
origin and effects of the institution of property, and on the way
in which individuals, in the pursuit of their own immediate
objects, are made unintentionally to contribute to the service
of the whole. The anti-propei^ty fallacy of Rousseau is effec-
tually exposed ; and the way opened for establishing the great
practical truth of the present times, — that we want, not a
division of property, but security for property. We are strug-
gling against principalities and powers, whose trade and traffic
it is to deprive us of our property by all the arts that fifty years'
experience can suggest. We are wrestling with a many-headed
Ikey Solomons ; with the Nev7 Police of the Political Unions
upon one side, and the venerable Charleys of an unreformed
parliament upon the other. We w^ant " chambers to be safe ;"
and not a new division of the lodgings.

The Seventh Lecture examines the effects of the progress of
society in wealth, on public morals ; and displays a marked
antipathy for war. It is evident the archbishop does not believe
in Montecuculi's '* god of armies ;'' though he has no objec-
tion to noting the degree in which the advance in wealth has
added to the military security of civilized communities.

' In the last place, you may observe what a security is afforded to
a Community advanced in wealth, in the vise of artillery, and the sci-
ence of the engineer, against that most demoralizing, as well as other-
wise frightful, calamity, the over-running of a civilized nation by hordes
of Barbarians ; which happened to the Roman empire, and led to
that dismal and degraded period known by the name of the Dark

Archbishop of Dublin

Ages. From the recurrence of precisely such an event, the civilized
world is secured, through the arts connected with the use of gun-
powder. These arts, as experience has shewn, have not rendered wars
more frequent or more destructive ; and though wars still occur, to the
disgrace of rational Beings and of Christians, their ravages, frightful as
they are, produce no effect comparable to the subjugation of a civilized
nation by a tribe of Huns. It may be observed, however, in addition,
that commerce between different nations, (which is both an effect and
a cause of national wealth,) by making them mutually dependent, tends
to lessen their disposition to go to war. Many wars have indeed
been occasioned by commercial jealousy ; but it will be found, that in
almost every instance this has arisen, on one side, if not on both, from
unsound views of Political Economy, which have occasioned the gene-
ral interests of the community to a very great amount to be sacrificed
for a much smaller advantage to a few individuals. The ruinous ex-
pensiveness also of war (which will never be adequately estimated till
the spread of civilization shall have gained general admission for just
views of Political Economy) would alone, if fairly computed, be almost
sufficient to banish war from the earth.'

* On the whole, then, there seems every reason to believe, that, as
a general rule, that advancement in National Prosperity which man-
kind are, by the Governor of the universe, adapted, and impelled, to
promote, must be favourable to moral improvement. Still more does
it appear evident, that such a conclusion must be acceptable to a
pious and philanthropic mind. If it is not probable, still less is it
desirable, that the Deity should have fitted and destined society to
make a continual progress, impeded only by slothful and negligent
habits, by war. rapine, and oppression, (in short, by violations of
divine commands.) which progress inevitably tends towards a greater
and greater moral corruption.'

' And yet there are some who appear not only to think, but to wish
to think, that a condition but little removed from the savage state —
one of ignorance, grossness, and poverty — unenlightened, semi-bar-
barous, and stationary, is the most favourable to virtue. You will
meet with persons who will be even offended if you attempt to awaken
them from their dreams about primitive rural simplicity, and to con-
vince them that the spread of civilization, which, they must see, has
a tendency to spread, does not tend to increase depravity. Supposing
their notion true, it must at least, one would think, be a melancholy
truth.'— jy. 186.

* On the who^.e then, I think we may conclude, that the notions
of those who consider a poor and imperfectly civilized community as
possessing, cseteris paribus, superior or even equal advantages in point
of moral improvement, are as much opposed to reason and to expe-
rience, as they are to every rational wish ; and that as the Most
High has evidently formed Society with a tendency to advancement
in National Wealth, so. He has designed and fitted us, to advance,
by means of that, in Virtue, and true Wisdom, and Happiness.' —
p. 198.

on Political Economy.

In the Eighth Lecture there is the following passage on
Smugglers. —

' An excessive multiplication of the latter class [ Smugglers] is pro-
duced by the enactment of laws, whose object is. not revenue, but ti e
exclusion of foreign productions for the suppose i benefit of domestic
industry. Whatever may be thought of the expediency of those laws,
with a view to national wealth, all must agree, that the extension of
smuggling must produce the most demoralizing effects.' — p. 207.

What a consideration for a spectator possessed of morals or
good sense, that all this evil is incurred for the sake of robbing
one man of a shilling to give it to another, and throwing a
second shilling into the sea besides !

A common charge against manufactures is, that they con-
tract the faculties of the labourer. One equally useful when
occasion suits, is that the manufacturing labourers are too
knowing. The manufacturers are the Helotes of society ; but
their day will some time come. Their difficulties and the
remedies, are discussed at considerable extent in the Eighth
Lecture.

The Lectures conclude with an intimation of more. The
whole of what has yet issued from the Oxford Professorship is
such as no person who pretends to reading or information
should be without ; and there can be no hesitation in looking
forward with the expectation of equal value, to what is to suc-
ceed.

Among defects which might be corrected in another edition,
may be mentioned, that there are too many attacks on foreign
churches. There is neither Greek nor Roman, in political
economy. It was wrong, to give to a sect what was meant lor
mankind ; and the temptation should have been resisted, if it
was only on the principle of not sacrificing the greater good for
the less. The classical quotations also are too numerous, for
readers who have not before their eyes the precise circum-
stances under which the Lectures were dehvered. In page
174, line 16, there would appear to be a misprint in the word
" neglect,*' which it is not easy to supply.

Westminster Review^, 1 January, 1832.

Art. VII. — 1. A Letter to Earl Grey on the subject of the Adjustment
of the House of Peers. — London. Ridgway. pp. 1 5.

2. List of ail the Members composing the House of Peers on Saturday
Morning f October 8, 1831; shewing the manner in which they

Adjustment of the House of Peers.

voted on the Reform Bill^ as well as those who were absent from
the Division ; together with other Lists, illustrative of that Pro-
ceeding, and involving the future fate of the Measure. — London.
Ridgway. pp. 28.

A S before this can be published, it may, or may not, be known
^ what line of conduct the Whig ministers mean to pursue
with relation to the House of Peers, it is necessary to write so
as to meet any of the hypotheses that may be formed upon the
ultimate event.

The facts displayed in the first of the Pamphlets noted, (and
which are supported by Tables presenting the titles of all con-
cerned,) are that on the Second Reading of the English Reform
Bill in the House of Peers,

' Of the Peers of the United Kin^jjdom of creation
antecedent to the conclusion of 1792, there voted

Of the Peers of the United Kingdom of creation sub
sequent to 1792 (including the latest creations)

Of the Archbishops and Bishops

Of the Representative Peers of Scotland .

Of the Representative Peers of Ireland ,

Of the Royal Dukes

AGAINST.

FOR.

199 158

' It appears, therefore,

1. That among the old Peers of the United Kingdom there was a
majority of two in favour of the Second Reading.

2. That among the new Peers of the United Kingdom (including the
creations under the present ministry up to the time of voting) there
was an exact balance ; and consequently the creations made under the
present ministry were precisely and to a unit the number required to
balance the influence of the peculiar system under which the new Peers,
or part of them, had been created.

3. That (after adding the votes of the three Royal Dukes, which
leave a majority of 1 in favour of the Second Reading) the 42 votes
which finally made the majority of 4] in the opposite direction, were the
votes of

21 Bishops against 2 ; being above 10 to 1,
12 Scotch Peers against 4; being 3 to
19 Irish Peers against 4 ; being 7iearly 5 to \,
The inference from the whole of which, is

That the people of England cannot have their Reform, because it
does not please the Bishops and the Scotch and Irish Peers.

Adjustment of the House of Peers,

The question which consequently arises is, whether

First, the Bishops,

Secondly, the Scotch,

Thirdly, the Irish Peers,
are or are not in the category which demands, — not as an act of
favour, but of fairness, — not in the character of a coup (Petat, but as
a portion of that every-day justice which the Sovereign is bound to
execute on every day when the occasion may present itself, — their
immediate neutralization by the exercise of the power lodged for that
purpose by the constitution.'

* There are some powers lodged by the constitution which never
have been exercised ; from which a strong argument might be de-
rived against their exercise at the present time. But this is not one
of them, for it has been exercised, and exercised one way, viz. against
the people. There is no reason therefore in the outset, why it should
not in turn be exercised in their behalf.'

* And first, of ;he Bishops, it may be asked, whether as conscientious
and honest men they will deny, that they or most of them are indivi-
duals picked for their zeal and talents by former ministers, to be
placed in the House of Peers for the express purpose of upholding the
system of those ministers by their votes whenever the occasion should
arrive. It is not mentioned as matter of blame to them ; the sin and
duplicity would be, if it were possible it should be denied that they
are the elite of the troops of former administrations, distinctly posted
where they are, for the purpose of acting against the present. And
if so, — is the country bound to submit a secular question to their
votes, when the constitution has provided the moderate and perfectly
pacific measure of neutralizing them by the introduction of new
Peers ?'

* Of the Representative Peers of Scotland a diflPerent view must be
taken. It is not intended to deny, that they are a highly respectable,
and even venerable, remnant of the feudal ages ; possessing much of
the interest attached to the relics of gone-by greatness, and the dignity
of decay. It is not intended to assert, that, though they undoubtedly
gratified their own inherent notions by falling in with the opportunity
the borough system offered them, they were the creatures oi the mi-
nistry for the time being, or are to be viewed in any light but as a race
of faded territorial sovereigns, whom the progress of the times has
happily deposed. But what it is intended to assert, is that the Peers
of Scotland are not the men to settle an English question ; — that they
were not brought into the House of Peers for any such purpose, and
that the mode and instrument through which the constitution provided
against their being ever applied to such an end, was the authority
lodged in the king to neutralize their power by making Peers in the
event of the case arising. If at the period of the Union with Scotland,
the question had been asked of the English people or government,

Do you then intend, if ever the sixteen Peers of Scotland or a majo-
rity of them should be opposed upon some English object, that the
carrying of the English object shall be prevented by the Peers of

Adjustment of the House of Peers.

Scotland ?" — the answer would instantly have been " No ; there is a
provision for such a case as that ; there is the power of the King to
make sixteen new Peers." Without an understanding of this kind, the
Union with Scotland would have been totally impracticable and un-
reasonable ; no man durst have proposed it, no man would have sub-
mitted to it ; the existence of the Union is evidence of the existence
of the right.'

* If it should be asked whether Peers will be created to support the
Peers of Scotland in resistance to Scotch Reform ; the answer is, that
the necessity of Scotch Reform is conceded on all sides. The parallel-
ism of the case is a non est inventus,^

* Of the Irish Representative Peers, the most moderate, conciliatory,
and tranquillizing thing that can be done or said, is to point to their
names and ask them whether it is not the boast and glory of the
greater part of them, that they were selected for their personal merits
and capabilities in support of one side of the great question now at
issue ; and whether they can in honour aver, that in this light they
are fair referees for the English people, without an equal number
being put in on the other side. It may, in the actual circumstances
of a country, be avowedly proper and expedient that the decision of a
question should be referred to the ancient magnates of the land. But
it never can be fair, that it should be referred to a portion of them
selected by the influence direct or indirect of one of the parties at
issue, without the other party having the opportunity at all events to
put in an equivalent. It would be like deciding by a jury where a
known portion of the jurymen had been nominated, it matters not
how many years ago, by one of the parties to the case. If this portion
cannot be removed, let the other side put in an equal number in its
turn ; and then there will be a chance that the remainder, who were
neither put in by one side nor the other, will effect a fair decision.
But till this is done, it is plain that justice does not stand straight
upon her legs.'

' This last operation with a jury, if a case can be conceived where
there should be no other resource, is what in the metaphor that has
been facetiously put forth, would be called swamping a jury. It is left
to the common sense of mankind, whether the proper phrase would
not be. that it was bringing it to an eve?t keel*

' The claim, therefore, on the part of the ])eople of the portion of the
United Kingdom called England, is for the immediate neutralization
of the Spiritual, Scotch, and Irish Lords, by the creation of forty-two
more Peers ; and when this piece of naked, abstract justice has been
performed, it will be time to debate the expediency or non expediency
of creating new Peers to carry a particular Bill if required. There
can be no mistake. What is advanced is, that till this is done, the
EngUsh people labour under a denial of justice; and that where jus-
tice ends, and not before, the question of expediency begins.'

* There is another claim, of smaller magnitude, but still of some ;
and that is, for an adjustment of the promotions in the Peerage since
1792. The balance sheet marked C in the Appendix, will show a

Adjustment of the House of Peers,

balance of 2 Marquesses to be raised to Dukes, 3 Earls to Marquesses,
5 Viscounts to Earls, and 3 Barons to Viscounts, due to the popular
side. The people have therefore a right to expect, that promotion to
this amount should be held over the heads of the peerage, as to be
conferred after the passing of the Bill. If the peerage is inaccessible
to considerations of this nature, there is no harm done ; and if it is
not, the people only claim a balance in futuroy for what has been
bestowed on the other side already.'

' If the opponents of the Bill should represent, that it is a shocking
thing to treat the rewards of eminent services as if they were cotton
or tallow, — and if, (as in the persuasion that the result would be in
their favour they would be likely enough to do,) they should demand
that the honours attached to great names in ihe military, naval, legal,
and diplomatic or civil lines of service should be struck out of the
reckoning, the List marked D in the Appendix will show that the re-
sult would be to require the creation of one more Peer on the people's
side, and in the promotions one Marquess to Duke less and two
Viscounts to Earls and one Baron to Viscount more ; a conclusion
probably unexpected by either of the parties concerned, — and which
might afford matter for meditation in various ways. It is evident that
if the opponents push for this particular improvement, it will be con-
ceded.' — Letter to Earl Grey,

The List referred to in the last paragraph, presents so re-
markable and unexpected a result, that it is given entire in a
note, for the meditation of all concerned. There will hardly
be found an individual who would not have taken for granted,
that under the circumstances of the fifty years' domination of
the Tories, the Peers elevated since 1792 for services, or their
representatives, would exhibit a decided majority in favour of
their creators. And yet, mark the result ; the Peers elevated
for services are against them. Is it that the Tories can
make Peers, but cannot keep them ? The military and diplo-
matic names are evenly divided. The law Lords are all over
to Tory. And the naval ones make the vessel finally heel to
Whig*.

* No hurtful precedent can be derived from such an adjustment ;
any more than from that created by a legal award. The precedent
cannot take place, without the previous circumstances being repeated ;
and if it does, it ought.'

' To resist such an adjustment on the ground of the inconvenience
of increasing the number of the House of Peers, — would be a sacrifice
of the greater interest to the less, like declining to take cognizance of
a majority in the House, to save the trouble of writing down the
names.'

• List op Peers of the United Kingdom elevated since 1792 for Military,
Naval, Legal, and Diplomatic or Civil Services, who voted on the Second Read-

Adjustment of the House of Peers.

* If the reasonable, limited, and moderate demand for an Adjust-
ment is not acceded to, the people of England must sit down under
the consciousness that their Reform has been withheld because it dis-
pleased the Bishops and the Scotch and Irish Peers ; and because the
Whig ministry, for reasons known to itself, refused to go forward
after being lifted to the top of the rampart on the shoulders of the
people, and declined advising the exertion of the constitutional power
provided for the case.'

* Why an administration which has hitherto led gallantly and been

ing of the English Reform Bill ; showing the elfect of striking out their names
on both sides.

IN THE

Marq.

Earl

Vise

Baron

IN THE

Marq

Earl

Vise

Baron

MAJORITY.

Duke.

to
Marq.

to
Earl.

to
Vise.

MINORITY.

to
Duke.

to
Marq.

to
Earl.

to
Vise.

■

Wellington

f Anglesey . . .

Beresford . . .

Lynedocli

Combermere . .

Howden

Hopetoun

Abercromby

Harris

Lake . . . .

Howe . . . .

Nelson . . , .

Exmouth . . .

Camperdown .

Gambler

St. Vincent . .

Hood . . . .

tRosslyn

Mulgrave . .

Eldon . . .

Anson (Lichfield).

Tenterden

De Saumarez

Redesdale

Gardner

Ellenborough

Barham

Lyndhurst

Stowell

Plunkett

Wynford

Aivanley

Manners

Brougham

Erskine

Sidmouth . . .

Gordon Qhor6.

Wellesley (Mar-

Aberdeen) .

quess)

Melville . . •

Grey . . . .

Bexley

Minto . , , .

Cowley

Goderich . ,

Colchester

Granville . . .

St. Helen's

Melbourne

Auckland

Creations 23.

Creations 24.

Hence if it was agreed to strike out these names on both sides, the result
would be to require the creation of one Peer more; and in the promotions, one
Marquess to Duke less, and two Viscounts to Earls and one Baron to Viscount
more.

f The Marquess of Anglesey and Earl of Rosslyn are Peers before 1792. Their
promotions only are therefore counted.

Adjustment of the House of Peers,

gallantly followed, should in this manner turn round when all the
enemy's defences are at its mercy, — is what, if the case happens, time
will show, and posterity assuredly inquire.' — Id,

Even on the supposition of the most favourable event as
respects the simple passing of the Reform Bill, two questions
must ever remain subjects of equal wonder, till time the divulger
^ shall explain the mystery ; — First, if the Bill is finally carried
without a creation of Peers, why the opportunity was lost of
carrying it with one ;— Secondly, if it is carried by means of a
creation, why this did not take place before. A Peer should
be in bottle a few weeks, before he is uncorked for use ; and
if any danger was really apprehended from the pique of the
Peers at the increase of their order, no invention could have
been hit on for increasing it, like bringing them up to the vote
in the uncooled magnanimity of their wrath. No man ought
to be forced to act when he is in a passion ; patrician and ple-
beian infirmity have an equal claim on this point to humane
consideration. Every person who has ever changed his mind,
must be aware what a tissue of rooted firm resolves will ooze
out in one night's communing with the friendly pillow ; and
how vastly the quantity may be increased, by the enlightening
slumbers of a fortnight. In such a period as the last, human
nature would have become reconciled to an increase of the Peers
in the proportion of seven to six, and a consequent diminution
of the dignity which depends on rarity, in the proportion of six
to seven. A patient in a hospital is never expected to part with
his limb without due space for making up his mind to the
separation ; and why should a man be desired to part with a
seventh portion of himself in a hurry ? The Peeresses too, are
known to be conciliatory ; it was wrong not to give time for
their gentle counsels sweet. If it is the will of heaven, the Bill
will undoubtedly be carried ; but still it was a bad arrangement,
that did not allow the Peers to cool their heads before they were
called to walk on a razor's edge across the gulph that is before
them. Nor is the wisdom of the course more intelligible, on the
supposition that Reform is carried without creation. If Peers
were not created, why were they not ? What connexion is
there, in common sense, between the possibility of the Bill's
being carried without^ and the policy of losing the opportunity
of carrying it with f Just as well might a general say, " I
preferred doing without ; because, otherwise, — I should have
had forty-two new pieces in battery for my after operations."
There never was but one tangible reason urged against the
creation of Peers, from the reforming side ; and that came from

Adjustment of the House of Peers,

some of the more thorouf^h- going of the Radicals, who said it
would popularize the House of Lords. If Lords knew all that
meant, — they would run to Earl Grey, as little boys do to
the mother that whipt them, when they are afraid of the
bull-begfrar.

One of the most remarkable phsenomena in political mecha-
nics, is the length of time men will go on, propping a falling
house on the wrong side. Let but the idea be started that this
is the direction in which to apprehend danger, and it will be
persevered in, as a cholera patient is denied a drop of water to
cool his parched tongue. The House of Peers is unpopular
with the country ; that is to say, a large proportion of the in-
habitants of the country have anything but friendly sentiments
towards it as an aggregate. The fact is not made by speaking
of it ; the Lords themselves acknowledge it, complain of it.
And the unpopularity is the consequence of their own acts, —
on which, the question is not raised whether they are mag-
nanimous and wise, but assertion made that they are unpopular.
For example, when a member of the House of Peers declared
in his place, that if he knew the writer who had given utter-
ance to a certain political report, (that the Queen had exerted
her intiuence against the Reform Bill,) he would kill him if he
could before the next day, — a man not devoid of intelligence,
nor wholly without the means of operating on others by ex-
ample and precept, called together his children and charged
them, if they should live to see the time when the conservation
of the House of Lords should be a question which their votes
or actions could in any way affect, to remember that their father
had implored and besought them, by the weight of every re-
collection whereby he could act upon their conduct, not to
assist in supporting a system of rule in which a man by virtue
of hereditary right, and with no possible check from any nomi-
nation of the governed, could give official utterance to such a
sentiment, for one hour longer than they would support the
domination of the West Indian planters if they had been born
negroes under their control. With this man, so far as he was
a fraction of the population, it may be assumed that the House
of Lords was unpopular. Anybody is at liberty to maintain,
that such feelings are as dangerous, as the gunpowder placed
under the House (if he did it) by Guy Faux ; the present
question is only, whether the gunpowder is there. The House
of Peers, whether justly or unreasonably, whether heroically or
in ignorance, has loaded and crammed its under stories with
the gunpowder of popular dislike and indignation ; and under
these circumstances, the doubt of the men who love their

Adjustment of the House of Peers.

** order,'' the fear and apprehension of that portion of the aristo-
cracy which possesses a hold on popular opinion, is whether
they should expose the hereditary branch to the evils of ad-
mixture, — to the inconvenience of a crowded house, and the
discredit of being elbowed by a king-and-people's Peer. The
zeal of anybody on this point may be nascent rather than un-
governable ; there are chances on one side as well as on the
other ; but the still small voice on the whole says, " Preserve
the House of Peers." It may be mistaken, and the other course
may turn out to be the best in the result ; but at the present
moment the balance of desire seems to be, that the minister
would secure the House of Peers. With a great proportion of
its members, the public has no distinct quarrel ; and for many
of them it has a personal, and what may perhaps please them
more, a hereditary regard. It would be pity that the laches
of the ministry, should ruin an institution needlessly. But
everything depends on grace. There are fine chances on the
other side ; and if it be the will of heaven to withhold its gifts
from the Lords, it remains only to hope it is for the sake of be-
stowing the more upon the rest of the community.

Among the inventions put forth by the enemy, one is, that
there would be a difficulty in finding individuals to accept of
seats in a House which has been so repeatedly recruited with
creations of the Tories. It might be so ; but it is a feeling
which ought to be overcome. The Heralds' Office might do
something towards removing it, by assigning some distinction
which should prevent the new Peers from being ever confounded
with any others. The date of the year in a conspicuous place
upon their coats of arms, would make them perfectly secure in
travelling with post horses, and prevent t*he slightest danger of
being pelted on any race-course in the country. But the oc-
casion for this difficulty altogether, as well as the suggested
inconvenience of increasing the number of the Peers, are in the
main only things of straw. To the List of the House of Peers
in the second pamphlet mentioned in the head, is appended a
list of twenty-five heirs apparent, and fifteen others standing in
the line of succession, who might be created without any per-
manent augmentation of the Peerage. If these are not enough,
or if any of them fail, new Peers might be recruited under the
supposed stipulation with the Heralds' Office ; and it is hard if
the country cannot produce twenty land-owners, twenty owners
of commercial or manufacturing property, ten lawyers, and ten
generals or admirals, from whom the minister might select a
cohort, that should not be afraid to speak with the Peers of the
Pitt and Liverpool Administrations in the gate. Another list

Adjustment of the House of Peers,

demonstrates, that of the Lords Lieutenants of counties, seven-
teen voted for the Reform Bill, and fifty-Jive against. Such
was the way the Tories had packed the counties for the approach-
ing Armageddon ; and it is to be a question whether a Whig
ministry are to exert the countervailing power when they have
it ! If they do not, the thing they call the constitution is a
cunningly devised fable, to let in mischief on the people, and
keep none out. It may be all very silly ; but if the game is to
be played with Peers, let it be played fair. It is said just now,
there are to be twenty-seven. But why are we to be defrauded
of our forty two ; is it that the Whigs want a difficulty in the
House of Lords to fall back upon? The theory that a creation
would be followed by a defection to an equal amount, is another
invention of the enemy. Some would probably fall off ; but
they would not balance those whom the display of serious
intention to carry the Bill, would cause to fall off the other
way.

The hypothesis which remains, is that ministers should act
like sensible men who do not want to turn the country upside
down, and make Peers. Why they did not do it before, must
still remain a mystery. But if they make them, all that has
been said is a justification of their course. If there is really to
be what a noble lord is reported to have called a " tussle,"— if
it is the determination of those that manage affairs, that nothing
shall serve them but a new heaven and a new earth such as may
arise out of making a chaos of the old,— there is no harm in
praying that by the will of Providence and the guidance of all
good angels, the morning stars may sing together at the birth
of the prettiest republic that ever smiled on man. But, as
Liston says, *' It is quite optional ;" they may keep the world in
the old course if they like. If they do not, let the blame, with
such as finally find fault, lie on those that cut the cable, or re-
fused to lay down a new one when they might.

The new Bill has made its appearance. The Tory humanity
has triumphed. They have saved their goose, and their
chimney is to be swept with a couple of ducks instead.

The Bill has been read a Second time, and the numbers are
324 /or the Bill, and 162 against ; being exactly 2 to 1. The
numbers on the Second Reading of the former Bill, were 367
/or, and 231 against ; being as 1*589 to 1. The relative ma-
jority on the new Second Reading is therefore to that on the
old, as 1 to '589 ; or as 17 to 10. The Whig aristocracy have
show^n talent, courage, honesty ; and they will go on. Vivent
nos offlciers !

Programme to <^c.

Programme to the Westminster Review for April 1, 1832.
The new Bill for Reform has passed the House of Commons, with
an increase of 10 votes for and 3 against, above the numbers on the
Third Reading of the previous Bill.

The Bill has also gone through one further stage, and been re-
ceived with more show of reverence than was expected. If Mrs.
Partington should be playing any trick now^ — she will rue it when
she feels the cold water ascending above her garters.

The Church had best act as in 1688, If she does, she will be a
Church of uncommon fatness a century longer than she would without.
The Radicals will Open ranks and present arms" to tlie Bishops, if
they will come in while there is any use in it. If they will not,

" Why then, with time, 't will turn into they would not."
Meanwhile the people waits upon Providence, which does all things
for the best. If the Whigs break pledge, there will be new game to
hunt. The Duke of Newcastle has soimded to horse, and it is quite
time for everybody to be getting their hounds in order.

There has been an insurrection in Jamaica. The people of Eng-
land had the same interest in it, as in any other military operation
the result of which was to be to save them from a disgraceful tribute.
Their allies had no military chance on this occasion, and have been
put down. They have shown, however, great improvement in many
respects. There used to be no hindering them, on any temporary
success, from sawing in two the last reprobate that had whipped a
pregnant woman to death, or executing a wild kind of justice" on
some of the ladies who had rubbed pepper into their children's eyes ;
but this time there has been none of it. They have conducted them-
selves like good men and Christians ; and if the English people does
not all ^all together under the slave-drivers and borough-dealers,
within six years they shall have a representative as black as soot,
legislating for the colonies. It would ue of great importance to get
some military knowledge among these men. They would make ex-
cellent troops with a few non-commissioned ofhcers from Haiti ; and,
if the enemy will only put his threats in execution, they will hav e to
be regimented and led by British officers.

The people of Great Britain have behaved well on the subject of
the Cholera ; though saints and sinners have done their best to hinder
it. There has been no panic, no howling. Two millions of property
are said to have been destroyed by the quarantine which was forced
upon the government for a pestilence which existed only in prophecy ;
and to this hour, by God's mercy it remains to be decided whether
the season has not been an extraordinarily healthy one. Gyves and
the tread-mill, were the proper punishment for prophets of this order;
and there are thousands who but for the rebuke of him who said *' Ye
know not what manner of spirit ye are of,'' would think they did God
Service by smiting the blasphemer that cursed us by his filthy Baal,
and held forth the Lord of heaven and earth as the pocket gri-gri
of the borough-mongers, protector-general of their stolen goods
accomplice after the fact by avensj;iiig the defunct dirtiness of
Old Sarura. The Reform Bill must be the cure.

VOL. II.

Saint' Simonianism, ^c.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1832.

Art. I. — 1. Doctrine de Saint- Simon. Exposition, Premiere Annee*
1829. — Seconde Edition. Paris. Mesnier. 8 vo. pp. 431.

2. Religion Samt-Simonienne. Reufiion Gentrale de la Famille.
Seances desVd et 2\ novembre. Note sur le Mariage etle Divorce ;
Lue au College de la Religion Saint- Simontenne, le 17 octohre,par
le Pere Rodrigues, — Paris. Everat, 1831. ^rocA. pp. 64.

3. The Social System : A Treatise on the Principle of Exchange.
By John Gray.— Edinburgh ; Tait. London; Longman & Co.
Svo. pp. 374.

4. Outline of the Rational System of Society, founded on demonstra-
ble Facts developing the Constitution and Laws of Human Nature ;
Being the only Effectual Remedy for the Evils experienced by the
Population of the World: the immediate adoption of which would
tranquillize the present agitated state of Society, and relieve it from
Moral and Physical Evil, by removing the Causes which produce
them. By Robert Owen. — London. Printed by Bradbury and
Evans. Sheet of 4to Post,

5. The British Co-operator, — London. Virtue. In Numbers, pp. 24.

'll/'HEN the inmates of a gallant vessel have been cast upon
^ ^ some desert island, and the shock of misfortune is over
and hope begins to lay together the materials for deliverance,
it is natural that each of the individuals in jeopardy should shape
his plans according to the course in which from habit or educa-
tion his ideas have previously flowed. A philosopher like him
of the Abyssinian valley, in such circumstances would be at-
tracted to the consideration of the facility, the speed, ar.d the
agreeableness, with which the lucky completion of his plan for
cleaving the air with artificial wings w^ould furnish to him the
power of escape. Another might with equal truth and certainty
dwell on the security, the satisfaction, and the comprehensive-
ness, with which a vessel for submarine navigation would land
himself and all most dear to him on the shores of civilized men.
A third might meditate a balloon ; and a fourth contemplate
the possibility of running down the trade-winds, tied, like the
youthful Franklin, to a paper-kite. In the midst of all these,
would stand up an order of gross and uninventive men, who
would say *' Let us build a schooner ;" and the odds are greatly,
that the schooner after all, shall be the destined instrument of
salvation for the whole.

Not much unlike this, is in some respects the actual state
of civilized mankind. The tempest has been long, and the
struggle severe ; ending in a state of temporary rest, which, after
all, was but the consummation of misfortune,— the quiet of the
shipwrecked mariner, who has leave to sleep because the powers

Saint' Simonianism, <^c»

of the air have wrought their will upon his bark. The tale of
those who have guided the interests of their fellow-men, is in
good sooth far different from his, who on the gentle waters of
Cockaigne invites the favouring winds from every quarter to
which he may point his stern,— who sees rocks only to avoid
them, and suspects shoals only to discover that he is on the
other side, — who if he fights, is always all foresight, divine
assistance, and rear-admiral, — whose shot never falls short, and
whose bombs never fail to set fire to his enemies' capital in th^ee
parts at once. Their lot has fallen in less pleasant places,
and they have not been of those of whom the psalmist said
** They come in no misfortune like other folk, and they leave
their substance to their babes." Nevertheless they in patience
possess their souls ; believing that though they be put to death,
not a hair of their head shall perish. Well may their opponents
call them '* the eternal enemies for none have been so well
drilled in the practice of despising present loss, and drawing
for success upon futurity. At this moment their hopes are high.
Though on the whole it may have been battu battant,"" they
have brought down some of the strong holds of their adver-
saries with a crash that augurs well for ultimate results.
The Holy-Alliance lieutenants have been driven from France ;
and the great iniquity of all, in England is nodding to its fall.
Honest men are much nearer " than when they believed," to
seeing something like an experiment of the effects of govern-
ing in the interests of their own class, instead of their natural
foes. A government of common-sense, for the bees and not
for the drones, seems, in our own country, to be almost within
reach. The " schooner*' is alioat and away, and wants nothing
but the word from the quarter-deck, to stretch out with every
reasonable prospect of happy conclusion towards the promised
land. All Europe gazes on the adventure ; and most of all,
the gallant men in France who a few short months ago gave
the first impulse to the voyage, are rich in hope of the security
and advantages of all kinds which will accrue to them from
its success. J ust at this moment it is, that in the two countries
is heard the most prodigious outcry for all manner of substitu-
tive remedies. The cause is clear ; it arises from the general
distress. No man should be blamed abstractedly, for wanting
to escape in an air-balloon ; the only blame is, when the at-
tachment to the air-balloon distracts him from combining in
more feasible operations.

The most extensive and magnificent of these counter-inven-
tions, is " Saint-Simonianism.'' It has, or had, two chief priests
and two newspapers. The Comte de Saint-Simon was born on
c 2

Saint- Simonianism, <^c.

the 17th of April 1760, and lived till the 19th of May 1825.
His family claimed to be descended from Charlemagne, through
the Counts of Vermandois. The youthful Saint- Simon fancied
that Charlemagne appeared and told him, that in addition to
having produced a " grand monarque," his family was to have
the glory of producing a *' grand philosophe ;" and in conse-
quence he entered the army at the age of seventeen, and made
his soldier-servant wake him every morning by calling out
" Monsieur le Comte, get up, you have great things to per-
form !*" The year afterwards, he went to America, where he
served five campaigns. The military profession is stated to
have been, to Saint-Simon, a powerful apprenticeship for the
part that God designed for him." It is not a bad one, for any
man ; particularly the dragoons, marches on horseback being
favourable to meditation. Saint-Simon seems to have been
proud of it ; for he takes an opportunity in his works to call to
mind the similarity of circumstances in the life of Descartes,
who, he says, ** was a soldier before he was a philosopher ; he
had been a fine fellow in the field, and he was venturesome
in his philosophic labours." The Count, however, appears to
have attended more to politics than tactics. He foresaw the
changes which the revolution in America was likely to produce
in Europe ; but the speculation he formed touching the cause
and cure, was marvellous. It was no other, than that the whole
was the result of the progressive decay of the Catholic faith
since Luther, and that the remedy was to be, the appearance of
a new religion.

Of the thirty-four years which intervened between this time
and the full developement of his " New Christianity," the Count
employed seven in making money for his plan, seven more in
collecting scientific materials for it, ten in composing a new
system of philosophy, and ten a new system of politics ; an
orderly procedure as it is possible to propose, but which was
not in all points attended with corresponding success. In
1790, he entered into some kind of *' financial speculations,"
which probably mean banking, — and after the happiest success,
he quarrelled with his partner, and got very little for his share.
He went on, however, giving dinners and lending money to
** savans" of all kinds, as long as he had any ; and when he had
no more left, he took to housekeeping " seul avec la conscience
de ce quil est that is to say, with nobody to keep him com-

* LkVEZ VOUS. MONSIEUR LE COMTB, VOUS AVEZ DE GRANDER CHOSFS

^ FAiRE.' — Exposition^ p. 63.

Saint- Simonianism, <^c.

pany but the recollection of the soldier-servant and his morning
calls. His first object after this, was to make a refonte " of
philosophy ; or as the metaphor may be expressed in English,
to put all of existing philosophy into a melting-pot, and turn it
out in a new form. In 1803, Napoleon had demanded of the
Institute an account of the progress of science since 1789.
The Institute made such very middling \mediocres^\ answers,
that the Count was obliged to write his Introduction to the
Scientific Performances of the 19th century." In this he showed
the Institute, that they had gone wrong from the moment they
left Descartes and followed Newton ; — that Descartes had es-
tablished the monarchical principle in science, and Newton had
turned it all into republicanism and anarchy ;— that they were
nothing but anarchical *savans,' for they denied the existence
and supremacy of a general theory*." And this the Saint-
Simonians call ** profondement vrai, mais severe^.''

The changes which the year 1814 brought with it, induced
the Count to give up his scientific speculations for polities.
For ten years he toiled after his manner, in trying to make the
French operatives comprehend the new part the times called on
them to perform. The operatives paid very little heed ; no
school, no party, could he form. Even the patience of Saint-
Simon gave way, and he began, it is stated, like Moses, to wish
the Lord would kill him out of hand. But it is no where said
that Moses tried to shoot himself through the head ; Saint-
Simon, however, did, and fortunately escaped with a graze on
the forehead. His hour, as is properly observed, was not yet
come ; he had not yet fulfilled all his servant had waked him
for. It is precisely after making this bad shot, that —

^ THE DIVINE MAN IS MANIFESTED, THE NEW CHRISTIANITY GIVEN
TO THE WORLD !' -

* Mo?iEsh.fiS promised mB.n\i\in\universal brotherhood ; [qucere "whQXQ ?
some think he rather intended a " peculiar people ;"] Jesus Christ
has prepared it ; Saint-Simon reduces it to practice. At last the
REALLY universal Church is to begin ; the reign of C^sar ends ;
a peaceful society takes place of the military one; from henceforward
the universal Church governs men^s temporal affairs as it does their

* 'II leur demande de revenir an point de vue de Descartes, qu'ils ont
entierement oublie pour celui de Nkwton. "Descartes avait monarchise
•* la science, leur disait-il ; Newton I'a republicanisee, il I'a anarchisee ; vons

n'^tes que des savans anarchistes j vous niez I'existence, la suprematie de la
" theorie gdnerale." {Lettres au bureau des Longitudes.^ On con9oit que ce
langage profondement vrai, mais severe, ne dut pas iui concilier la faveur des
hommes peu philosophes auxqueis il s'adressait. L'avenir le comprendra
m\ei\x/ — Kvposition, p. 67.

It may be stated here once for all, that the quotations and translations
given in the text and notes, are as closely as possible fac-similes of the original ;
the Italics and Capitals of various kinds being carefully preserved without
alteration.

+ Profoundly true, but severe."

Saint- Simonianism, ^c.

spiritual, the tribunal of outward law as of inward conscience. Science
is [henceforth] holy, and industry is kol//, for they enable men to im-
prove the lot of the poorest class, and make them approach to God,
Priests, savans,''^ operatives^ — there you have the whole of society.
The chiefs of these priests, the chiefs of these savans,^^ the chiefs of
these operatives, — there you have the whole of government. And all
property is the property of the Church, and every profession in life is a
religious office, a step in the social hierarchy. To every man according
to his capacity ; to every capacity according to its works. The reign
OF God arrives on earth. All the prophecies are fulfilled.'
' Saint-Simon, now you may [lie in bed. No, the text is, may] die,

FOR YOU HAVE PERFORMED GREAT THINGS !*'

Here is manifestly a sweeping plan ; nothing but that of the
Fifth-Monarchy Men can be compared to it for boldness. But
it is not new ; the reign of the saints on earth has been heard
of before in many shapes, and there has never been any lack of
volunteers to be members of the reigning family. Saint-Simon
must be sifted ; for in these suspicious days it is not voluntary
beggary, nor the peculiarity of taste which prefers being a
" Divine Man" to being a French nobleman, that will enable a
new church mendicant to ride rough-shod over the liberties of
mankind.

There are to be torrents of industry, of operatives, of savans,
and of priests. Moreover all these — that is, the living kinds —
are to be endowed with chiefs. And the great end for which
these chiefs rule, — as far, at least, as questions of property are
concerned, — is that ** every man may have according to his
capacity, and every capacity according to its works." Does
this mean his capacity for working, — for getting money and
for keeping it ? If so, what is there that is new ? All this is
what must be explained by degrees.

The " First Sitting" opens with complaints of the indocihty
and hobgoblin dread of despotism, which the events within the

* ' — J i/hOMME DIVIN SE MANIPESTE : LE NOUVEAU CHRISTIANISME EST
DONNE AU MONDE !'

* Moi'sE a promis aux hommes la fraternite universelle ; J^sus-Christ I'a
preparee; Saint-Simon la rea^jse. Enfin I'Eglisk vraimbnt universellb
va naitre ; le regne de C/sar cesse } une societe pacifique remplace la societe
militaire ; desormais I'Eglisb universelle gouverne le tempurel covr.me \e
spiritual, le for exterieur comme le for interieur. La science est sainte, Vindustrie
est sainte, car elles servent aux hommes a ameliorer le sort de la classe la plus
pauvre, a la rapprocher de Dieu. Despretres, des savans, des industrials, voila
toute la societe. Les chefs despretres. les chefs des savans, les chefs des industriels,
voila tout le gouvernement. Et tout bien est bien de I'Eglise, et toute profession
estunefonction religieuse, un grade dans la hierarchie sociale. A chacun selon
sa capacite ; a chaque cnpacite selon ses oeuvrcs. Le regne de Dieu arrive

SUR LA TERRE. TOUTES LES PROPHETIES SONT ACCOMPLIES.'

* Saint-Simon, maintenant tu peux mourir, car tu as fait de grandes
c HOSES !* — Exposition, p. 70.

Saint- Simonianism, <^c.

compass of existing human life have left among mankind*. As
if it was anything wonderful, that after men have made so many
efforts to escape out of the frying-pan, they should be afraid
to jump into the fire. The Saint-Simonians resemble the
royalistes purs in the innocence of their belief, that nothing
but the stupidity of mankind in not allowing them to have
everything their own way, is the cause of all the evil in the
world.

The '* law of developement of the human race," as " revealed
to the genius of Saint-Simon," is that there are two distinct
and alternating states of society," — one the organic'^ state
(meaning apparently the organized), where " all the results
of human activity are classed, foreseen, and * ordained ' by a
general theory, and the aim of the social action clearly defined ;"
the other, which is called (the reader will never guess why) the
" critical,''^ [critique'], " in which all community of thought,
all operation in union, all * co-ordaining ' is at an end, and society
presents nothing but an agglomeration of insulated individuals
struggling one against another." Each of these states, has
occupied two periods in history. One " organic" state, (which
must have been the golden age), preceded the sera of the Greeks
which is commonly called the philosophic, but which the Saint-
Simonians for more exactness describe as the first *' critical."
This was in time succeeded by a second ** organic" state, which
was no other than the palmy condition of the Catholic church
till the 15th century, and which ceased at the instant when the
Reformers gave the signal for the commencement of the second
" critical" which has continued to the present day.

The critical" epochs, like the ague, have two distinct
periods; one, while the ancient "organic" order of things is
being brought into hatred and finally destroyed, and the other,
in the interval between the destruction of the old organic order
and the establishment of the new. It is in one of this last kind
of periods, that we are living in the year of grace 1832.

For proof of the extent to which the world is out of joint, the
objects of human pursuits are divided into "science, industry,
and the fine arts." All the direct leaders of science, it is stated,
" are followers of the road which was opened at the end
of the 16th century by Bacon. They heap up experiments,
they dissect the whole of nature," &c. but who is there
to class and arrange the disorderly collection ? " If any-
body were to ask what link, connects the attraction of the
heavenly bodies and the attraction of the particles in an indi-
vidual body [the Saint-Simonians must have some secret

* * Notre humeurindocile, notre haineombrageuse, nous presentent incessam-
ment le fantome du despotisme.' — Exposition, p. 76.

Saint- Simonianism, ^c.

upon this point], or by what general conception of the order
of phaenomena the learned regulate their researches on the
nature of inanimate and animated matter, not only would such
questions get no answer, but nobody seems to think of taking
the trouble of looking for one*." Men, it appears, have begun
at the wrong end ; and instead of trying what they could dis-
cover, they should have formed a Saint-Simonian Institute to
tell them what they should discover. The Saint-Simonian term
is co-ordain men have not discovered aright, because nobody
would "co-ordain" for them beforehand. And *' co-ordain"
means to command. " The Academy does not command the
progress of science ; it is satisfied with enregistering itt."
And the consequence of this absence of all regulation for telling
a man where to prick for discovery, is that *' the sciences offer
the afflicting spectacle of anarchy complete."

On the subject of Industry," the first notable observation
communicated to the reader, is that the greater part of manu-
facturing establishments and machinery, are in the hands of
people who do not know how to use them ; and in particular,
the foremen in general are very unfit for their places, and the
stimulus of personal interest is not found sufficient to make
them learn their business as they oughtj. The explanation of
which may be suspected to be, that they would do it much
better if they were appointed by a committee of Saint-Simonian
chiefs. The owner of a work-shop has not sense to chuse his
foremen ; and there must be a Select Vestry to do it properly.

The " economists" ( meaning either the French sect so called,
or political economists in general, or probably both), are repre-
sented as having proposed to themselves the following problem ;
** Given a set of governors more ignorant than the governed,
and supposing the object of these governors to be to cramp in-
dustry and injure the productive classes, what are the kind of
regulations society ought to have ?" This statement of the
case would not be without wit, if it was directed, as some may
surmise it is, against restrictions upon industry. But no ; it is
levelled against the principle of leaving men to themselves. It
is stated in express terms, that though there may be a few
monopolies and exclusive privileges, the greater part of them

* p. 82.

t • L'academie ne commande pas le progres, elle se contente de 1'enregis-
TRER.'— p. 85.

% ' En quelles mains, enfin, sont places la plupart des ateliers et iustrumens
d'industrie ? Sont ils livres aux hommes qui pourraient en tirer ie meilleur
parti possible, dans I'interetde la societe ? Assurement non. lis sont, en gene-
ral, manies par des gerans inhabiles, et I'on ne remarque pas jusquMci, que leur
interet personnel ait conduit ces gerans a apprendrece qu'iis devraient savoir.' —
Exposition, p. 89.

Saint- Simonianismy S;c,

have only a nominal existence, and that in matter of fact the
liberty is great, and both France and England have given gene-
ral scope to the principle of freedom of the economists. The
quarrel therefore is not here. Where then is it ? It is with
this, — '* That the industrious are left with no guide as to the
quantity of consumption and production required, but their own
personal observations. They hear a report that there is a fine
opening in some particular branch of production, and there they
throw themselves and their capital with their eyes shut, and
without taking time to inquire into the proportion that is
wanted ; while the economists clap their hands at the idea
that among these jostling interests the principle of competition
will be applied on a broad scale, and the end is the success of a
lucky few, and the ruin of the countless remainder*." And
all this for want of a Saint-Simonian Select Vestry to commu-
nicate between the clothiers in the country and the tailors in
the town, and by parity of reasoning between the said tailors and
their customers, and inform each what quantity of waistcoat,
coat, and pantaloon, will be wanted for the perfect convenience
of the Saint-Simonian community. Some have thought that
Exchanges and Cloth-Halls were something like a Vestry for
this purpose ; but thpn they were not Select. Every man was
left to the dangerous responsibility of taking care of himself;
and the tradesman on one side the way had not the benefit
of the directions of the tradesman on the other, nor of the
tradesman-Grand- Deputy to whom they might agree to refer
the regulation of their purchases and sales. This may be a loss
to the private tradesmen, but at all events it is a great loss to the
Grand Deputy ; the proof of which will be, the zeal with which
each of the tradesmen will propose himself to fill the office.

And here it is impossible to maintain a staid countenance
any longer, and not to break out into the assertion, that this is
the shallowest plot ever begotten of human love of power on
human imbecility. As if the one great lesson which the ex-

* Aujourd'hiii, s'il regne quelques privileges exclusifs, quelques monopoles,
la plupart n'ont d'existence que dans les dispositions legislatives. De fait la
liberie est grande, et la maxime des economistes est appliquee generalement en
France et en Angleterre. Eh bien ! quel est le tableau que nous avons sous les
yeux ? chaque industriel, prive de guide, sans autre boussole que ses observa-
tions personnelles, toujours incompletes, quelque etendues que soient ses rela-
tions, cherche a s'instruire des besoins de la consommation. Le bruit vient-il
a circuler qu'une branche de production presente de belles chances ? tous les
efforts, tous les capitaux se dirigent vers elle, chacun se precipite en aveugle ;
on ne prend pas le temps de s'inquieter de la mesure convenable, des limites
necessaires. Les economistes applaudissent a la vue de cette route encombree,
parcequ'au grand nombre des jouteurs ils reconnaissent que le principe de la
concurrence va etre largement applique. Helas ) que resulte-t-il de cette lutte a
mort ? Quelques heureux triomphent . . . ; mais c'est au prix de la ruine complete
d'innombrables victimes.' — Exposition, p. 90.

Saint- Simonianism, ^c.

perience of all ages has impressed upon mankind, the mighty
moral which failure and misfortune in every direction have been
whipping into the world since the creation, though it appears
without ultimate success, — was not, that whoever has brains so
unwashen as to give up the guidance of himself and his con-
cerns to any man or collection of men, call it Pope, Papa, Priest,
Parliament, or Parish-officer, in the confidence that they in their
superior wisdom and prodigious virtue are to do better for him
than he can compass for himself,— is as sure to be cheated as
fatlings to be eaten, — that he is a human porker, and the true
and only prototype, so far as he can go to make a multitude, for
the brutal and insulting appellation it pleased a defender of
abuses in the gone-by times to cast on the honest and suffering
portion of his fellow-creatures. As if every page that has been
turned over in human history had not stamped and authenti-
cated the fact, that there is no way of securing even moderate
atterition to the interests of the mass, in those to whom impe-
rious necessity makes it inevitable to entrust a portion of the
community's affairs, but in exact proportion to the extent and
incessant energetic operation that can be given to two processes,
— First, the increasing the influence of the members of the club
at large over their committee,— and Secondly, the diminution
by all possible means of what shall be left to the committee at
all. All attempts at the improvement of government lie in one
of these directions. Representation and election are inventions
to promote the first ; Constitutions are an attempt to effect the
second, by making a clear and definite statement of what the
sovereign community, in the plenitude of its free will, has ap-
pointed a thing called a government to manage for it as its
agent, and what it has not. The world thought it had got some
way in these matters ; but it appears the mistake has been, that
it has not yet instituted the right sort of tyranny. All sorts are
the right sort, for those who are to have arid hold. No sort is
the wrong one, for those who by any quantity of unctuous pro-
mises can coax themselves into the saddle. Folly is of all ca-
libres, therefore there will be some to fit every borer. The
periods following upon great and not very successful agitations,
have always been favourable for illuminati of all kinds ; — in
half a century it is very likely the Saint-Simonians will have
ceased to walk abroad in their doublets and hose, and be tamed
down into as harmless and beneficent a sect as the Quakers.
At present, however, they are manifestly in their ambitious and
stirring stage, and put abroad their feelers in all directions for
their game. As has been the charge against Mohammed, their
Koran contains a little for all parties. The royalist is gratified
by the admission, that all evil arises from the want of power ;

Saint- Simonianismf <$'C,

and the republican is courted by the representation, that the
only object is to do what he has attempted to perform. The
churchman is invited by the assurance that the new state of
society is to be all Church ; and the litterateur is tempted by
the prospect of a new heaven of science, in which every man
is to bear an inverse ratio to his standing in the old establish-
ment. In these circumstances it was not to be expected that
there should be no attempt to rally the sinking prejudices of
the working classes ; and it is accordingly made, with a naked-
ness that goes far to defeat its own purpose. The celebrated
principle of " Leave men to themselves," is stated to err through
taking for granted, " that the interest of the individual is always
in harmony with the interest of the community an assumption,
it is added, which numberless facts prove to be untrue. Now
it unfortunately happens that the assumption was never this,
but the directly contrary ; for it was always known, to all except
the remnant of the Tories in the English Parliament, that the
interest of each particular trader, in his individual capacity, was
directly contrary to the interest of the community; — that it was
his interest by any and all means to increase what he got for
himself, without caring with what wasteful loss this might be
attended to any other person, as really as (without necessity to
push the parallel on the score of immorality) it is the interest of
an individual highwayman to take the most he can upon his
beat ; — and what the unfortunates could never be made to un-
derstand, was that this might be literally exact, and yet it might
be as true that all men could not gain by making forced gains
from all, as that they could not gain by with one consent turn-
ing highwaymen, and trying to create public wealth by every-
body robbing everybody on the high road. The Tories never
could comprehend and never will— for when men comprehend
it they must cease to be Tories — that though one man may gain
by such a process, when all come to try it on one another a
portion of the ill must be reflected on himself, which if there is
anything like fair play, must swallow up all he possibly could
gain, with the infliction of a portion of the wastefuUoss besides,
— and consequently one of the first objects of the institution of
general government, is to save society from the evils which the
undigested interests of its component parts would inflict upon
the whole. " Leave men to themselves," meant leave them as
they are left on the high road, to go any way they like except
to rob their neighbour's garden. It meant leave them to them-
selves except where the welfare of the community necessitates
restraint ; and under this reservation the desire of all men to
enjoy is the precise instrument, the very principle of universal
gravitation towards the same point, by virtue of which, instead

Sain t' Sim onianism , <^c.

of all things rushing to one common ruin, the circuit of the
world is carried on, and the commercial cycle kept in continual
gyration. Those who would see this eloquently displayed, can
turn to no better place than the Archbishop of Dublin's book
which was the subject of the first Article in the preceding Num-
ber of this Review*. There may they see how, in the language
of the old Puritans, man's difficulty is God's opportunity ; and
the business of the supposed head-commissary in page 103, may
be taken as the counterpart of what a Saint- Simonian commit-
tee will have to undertake.

But if the friends of the principle of ** Leaving men to them-
selves," were far from assuming for it that the interest of the
individual never attacked the interest of the community, they
were equally far from resting it on the belief that the interest of
the community never endangered the interest of an individual.
The Saint-Simonians, therefore, take nothing by their appeal
either to steam-engines or to printing, except the discredit of
having condescended to enlist the rudest prejudices of ignorance
on their side. They bring forward the venerable objection of the
Turks to the printing-press, viz. that it throws out of employ-
ment the faculty of scribes ; they next produce an insufficient
answer, — insufficient as regards the principal assertion it is
their object to bring forward, which is that the introduction of
the printing-press is attended with the starving of thousands
of scribes ; and they wind up their argument with an intimation
that they are in possession of the secret which, though they do
not intend to prohibit the invention of machinery, is to prevent
the mischief that might ensue. If this is not enlisting the
prejudices of ignorance, they have been charged unjustly; and
their own words are quoted below, that there may be no oppor-
tunity for judgment being given by mistake f. The answer to

* See page 2 of the present Volume.

t * La reponse a cette objection est connue; on cite I'imprimerie, par ex-
emple, et I'on etablit qu'elle occupe plus d'hommes aujourd'hui quMl n'y avait
de copistes avant son invention, puis I'on tire la consequence, et I'on dit : Done
tout Jinit par se niveler. Admirable conclusion ! Et, jusqu'a I'achevement com-
plet de ce niveilement, que ferons-nous de ces milliers d'hommes affames ? Nos
raisonnemens les consoleront-ils ? prendront-ils leur misere en patience, parce
que les calculs statistiques prouveront que, dans un certain nombre d'annees,
ils auront du pain ?'

' Assurement la mecanique n*arien a voir ici, elle doit enfanter tout ce que
son genie lui inspire; mais la prevoyance sociale doit faire en sorte que les
conquetes de Vindustrie ne soient pas comme celles de la guerre; les chants
funebres ne doivent plus se meler aux chants d'allegresse.' — Ea'position, p. 91.

* The answer to this objection is well known ; the case is quoted, for example,
of printing, and we are told that it employs more individuals at the present mo-
ment, than there vi^ere copying scribes before it was invented, and then the
argument is wound up with, " So you see everything Jinds its level in the end."
Wonderful conclusion ! And till this level is cornpleted, what are we to do with
the thousands of individuals exposed to be starved ? Vl^ill our fine reasoning be
any comfort to them ? Will they bear starving any better for knowing, that it

Saint' Si monianism, <^c.

the objection that the invention of printing will be the starving
of thousands of scribes, is not that they will have enough to eat
some years afterwards, but that it will not cause thousands of
scribes to be starved. Let it be calculated how many years in-
tervened between the invention of printing and its making any
serious inroad on the use of manuscript, and by what kind of ad-
vances it hung upon the rear of the retreating scribes ; and thenlet
rigid inquisition be made for a starved scribe, and produce him if
you can. The truth is that the general employment for scribes
would at first be reduced by a certain quantity ; that this would
make it less desirable than heretofore to bring up a boy to the
business of a scribe, and act as a bounty for bringing him up to
something else ; that at the same time there would be an
increased demand for persons to be employed, imprimis in
printing, which is the new art that is to supersede the other,
and secondly in all those other arts in which the demand will
be increased by the expenditure of what is saved to the con-
sumers of literature by the use of printing ; — that from these
causes there will arise a contemporaneous increase of demand
for boys and men in other callings, which maybe considered as
nature's provision to meet the case ; and^of all this the result
will be, not that thousands of scribes will be starved, but that
there will be a gradual withdrawal of recruits, and in a certain
degree of grown men also, from the business of a scribe, and a
transfusion into some other, in the same manner as there has
been a gradual withdrawal of wig-makers or their offspring
from the business of a wig-maker, without any instance of the
fields being found strewed as after a battle, with deceased per-
ruquiers. That it was not a consummation the perruquiers
would ever have thought of coveting, may be true. Most men
have a leaning towards putting their children into their own
calhng, and find some advantage in so doing. Of this advan-
tage the peruke-makers were undoubtedly deprived ; but it is a
complete exaggeration and totally beyond the fact, to say that
peruke-makers vvere found starved by thousands in conse-
quence of the w^orld taking to wearing its own hair. There
were probably not less than three or four millions of perukes
made and daily kept in order at one period in Europe ; yet
nobody ever found a dead peruke-maker oftener than a dead
rhinoceros. And the reason plainly is, that all men did not come

can be decidedly proved by political economists, that in a certain number of
years they will have something to eat ?'

• Most certainly it is not intended by this to make any attack upon machinery;
it has a right to give birth to all that the genius engaged in it can produce. But
the foresighl ot the social body should take measures for preventing the con-
quests of industry from resembling those of war; there should be an end of
mingling the dirge of mourning with the songs of joy.*

Saint' Simonianism, ^c.

to the conclusion that wigs were nasty at once. The opinion
insinuated itself by degrees ; yet not so slowly as to count many
years between the palmy state of wigs and their virtual extinc-
tion. Mr. Pitt's powder-tax gave the last blow to them that
handled the pufF and curling-tongs ; yet even then, no cry arose
to heaven, beyond a reported petition of the hair-dressers to the
Prince of Wales, that he would be pleased to wear a wig. This
is the course of things everywhere, when no artificial support has
been given to the evil. Printing would not have penetrated
into Turkey, faster than the disuse of perukes into Europe ;
and there would have been equally little reason to apprehend
its strewing the earth with images of war. If indeed the folly
or roguery of law-makers has dammed up the course of industry
into an artificial channel, there may be strong reason why
reform should imitate the processes of nature, and ensure some
degree of graduality in the change. But all this was known,
without calling Saint- Simonianism from the vasty deep, and
will not be known the better afterwards. This part of the
advertisement, therefore, acts only as a lure to the working
classes, on a promise which will either be performed as anybody
else would have performed it, or else be not performed at all.

In the chapter on '* Beaux- Arts" the information is conveyed,
that the ^Ys>i epoque organique wsl^ Paganism up to the time of
Socrates*. The two past " organic" epochs, therefore, are
Paganism and Catholicisniy while the two " critical" are Greek
Philosophy and Protestantism ; and the Saint-Simonians live
in hope, of establishing a third " organic" epoch.

The chapter says very little of the beaux-arts" but that they
are " beaux." But it says that we are in an epoque critique ;
that poets are no longer the law- givers of society ; that the
Americans made a bargain to supply the Turks with provisions,
and gave no assistance to the republics of the South ; and that
they did not help the Haitians, to pay their ransom to the
French. If some Americans sold to the Turks, there were
others that gave to the Greeks ; and it is not very long since
all the salons of all the absolutists in Europe were in a pucker,
at the declaration of the American President that he would not
allow of interference with the South-American Republics. If
one part of the Americans were jealous of Haiti, another estab-

» * Nous avons dit plus haut ce qu'il fallait entendre par les mots epoques
organiqueSy epoques critiques ; nous avons dit que \e paganisme jusqn'h Socrate,
et le christianisme jusqu'a Lutheb, avaient forme deux etats organiques ; esquis-
sons &c.' — Exposition, p. 95.

* In a former place was stated the meaning of organic and critical epochs ; and
it was said that paganism up to the time of Socrates, and Christianity up to the
time of LuTHEK, had formed two organic states. Let us sketch &c.'

If the first organic state was ever defined before, it has not been observed.

Saifi t- Sim onianism, <^c.

lished a twenty-sixth State of free black men in Liberia. More-
over men make " bons manages'^ when they can, and foolish
ones when they cannot help it ; all which the Saint-Simonians
never mean to do. The inference from the whole of which may
be understood to be, that things never will go right, till Select
Vestries rule the world.

The Second Sitting" begins with representing the pain it
gave the sitters on the last occasion, to have to sketch the
state to which " criticism^' — the habit of criticizing, for so they
explain it in the sequel*— has reduced the world. The altar
has been profaned by the scandalous competition of different
forms of worship! [cwto], and the fragments of the sceptre
scattered among a thousand hands, as men after an action
divide what the Germans call " plunder of battle." In short,
there has not been the right tyranny anywhere. But they
still have a hope, that the minds of their readers, " once disen-
chanted of that gazing-stock of liberty, in the name of which
everything is held lawful," will see the true value of this
" miserable metaphysique^ — they really call it so — and on this
they promise to proceed to expound " the doctrine which is to
give the solution of the grand social problem." Whether they ever
expound it, or whether they expound anything, is what every
person must settle for himself. The following are the extracts
among which it is presumable the exposition must be looked
for. Humanity," it has ^been declared by Saint-Simon, ** is a
collective being which is gradually developed ; this being has
grown greater from generation to generation, as an individual
grows greater in the succession of the several ages of human
life J." In the next place, " there are three grand secondary
series, answering to the three modes of human activity, namely
SENTIMENT, intelligence, and worldly [materielle] activity^.'*
They say they cannot enter into details of the developement of
these three sets of qualities ; but every man must do it for
himself!]. And *'this," it is declared, " is the law of perfecti-
bility of human kind^." Novv^ it is plain there is no going on
orderly with such matter as this ; it is all hei mihi, beate
Martine it is what St. Paul would have called wood, hay,
stubble,"— such rubbish as men put forth for the mystification
of such other men, as being conscious that what they understand
is of little moment, are minded to try whether what they do not
understand may be of greater value. Saint-Simon is transcen-

* • — epoques critiqueSt dans lesquelles I'ordre ancien est critique, attaque,
detruit.'— p. 137. I. 23.

• — critical epochs, in which the ancient order of things is criticized, attacked,
destroyed.'

tp. 105. ^. 16. tp. 107. 21. § p. 103. Z. 15. j] p. 110. /. 25. ^ p. 111. MS.

Saint- Simonianism, ^^c.

dental ; it is simply that kind of nonsense of which nothing
substantial can be made, the leaven which men incapable of
better raise their dough withal, and puff up weaker brethren
into an opinion that they have something in common stock.
All wisdom is first simple, then easy ; nobody ever found it in
the midst of puzzle, or detected it among big swelling words
that rumble on the ear and leave no impression on the mind.
But there always will be men who will follow after the like.
There is no help for it ; they must only draw off to one side
together, and form a millennium if they can.

The " Third Sitting" appears to consist entirely of the figure
called rigmarole. The only thing worth noting in it, is the
explanation of the term *' critical," as applied to those alternating
periods of evil, in one of which we now live. They are " critical,"
because in them the ancient order of things is criticized*."

The object of the " Fourth Sitting" is to show, that there
have been two different slates in the world, a state of " antago-
nism" and a state of " association;" that antagonism is when
men do not associate, and association is when men do not
antagonize. The world is said, and rightly, to have grown
much wiser upon these points ; and association seems to be
making great head against its adversary^ Anthropophagy,
slavery, and plebeiauism, the Saint- Simonians represent as the
decreasing terms of the series of human wrong. It would be
unfair not to notice, that they say a good word for those Sir
Francis Burdetts and Joseph Humes of antiquity, the Gracchi.
The Catholic clergy are represented as having given the first
outline of a society, in which the principle of setting one man
to live upon another is in a state of complete exclusion.

The " Fifth Sitting" begins with a profession of faith, that
" the world is advancing towards a unity of doctrine and of
action and ends with asserting that the definitive object
towards which the capacities of all mankind are to be made
by Saint-Simon to converge, is *' universal association,

THROUGH THE MEANS OF, AND WITH a VIEW TO, THE CONTINU-
ALLY PROGRESSIVE AMELIORATION OF THE MORAL, PHYSICAL,
AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE HUMAN RACEf." There

is no denying that this is a fine object ; the description of it
might be taken for a fragment of Mr. Owen. The only question
is of how far anybody is going the way to compass it.

The '* Sixth Sitting" opens out on the Saint-Sjmonians' plan
for reducing the grand idea to act. The receiving of wages they
declare to be the latest form of slavery! ;" for as the man must

* p. 137. ^. 23. t p. 171.

t ' Le rapport du maitre avec le salarie est la derniere transformation qu'a
subie ^esclava^e.'— p. 175. /, G.

Saint' Simoni aniam, ^c.

either take his wages or starve, it is clearly servile to do the
first. The moral maxim which declares that no man ought to be
stricken with incapacity in consequence of his birth, they state
to have been long since received into society ; but they -find it a
shocking contradiction to this rule, that John hostler should be
incapacitated by birth from putting his hand into the purse of
Mr. Rothschild. They complain that this privilege is basely
reserved for Mr. Rothschild junior. They think — they really
say so — that the right of handling Mr. Rothschild's purse should
in fairness be turn and turn about*. But instead of this, they
say, the mass of working people is " exploitee'' — a term of wide
significance the Saint-Simonians are fond of — by the men
whose property they make of use ; the actual directors of the
work undergo the same operation of ** exploitation'^ by the pro-
prietors, but in an incomparably less degree, and in return they
are admitted to a share in the " exploitation'^ of the mass of
the working classes, on whom the whole falls in the endf. The
real workman, they aver, is, though with less intensity, " ex-
ploits^' substantially, intellectually, and morally, as the slave
was before himj. It is quite clear, they say, that he has not
the option of working or not as he likes ; for if he does not like,
he starves §. And all this the Saint-Simonians propose to
mend.

It would seem to be a very simple truth, that a man must
either be supported by working or be supported without it. But
it is the experience of the world at large, that men cannot be
supported without at all events somebody working, and that it
is, in the opinion of most men, pleasanter not to work than to
work, if they could have all without working that they could
wish to have with it. To say that wise men love work, is a
stupid fallacy. They love working with what work brings along
with it ;— they are fond of the pea with the shell, but they do
not love the shells without the pease. Do the Saint-Simonians
then intend to invent a state of things, where great lubbers are
to be kept like Tories without working, or anybody else having
worked for them ? It is presumed, not ; for one of their lead-
ing mottoes is, that every man is to have according to his works.
In what way, then, have they got over the difficulty ? If the
Saint-Simonian lazy lout is to be left to starve for want of an
order for meat and clothing from the Saint-Simonian committee,

* * II semble done quMl doive se. faire aujourd'hui, entre les diverses
classes de la societe, un echange continuel des families et des individus qui les
composent, et que par suite de cette circulation ,rexploitation deThommepar
I'homme si elle se continue encore, soit tiottante, au uioins quant aux races sur
lesquelles elle pese.' — p. 175. 22.
The literal meaning of exploiter is *' to work, as a mine, &c.'*
t p. 176. /.2. t p. 176. /.20. § p. 175. /. 16.

VOL.11. D

Saint- SimonioMism, ^c.

wherein does he differ from the lout of every-day humanity,
and what becomes of the complaint that a man must work or
starve? This is a "cock-and-bull" story to attract the work-
ing classes, by promises which *' with half an eye'* may be seen
to be impossible. Any reasonable propositions for amending
the condition of the working classes, , are what all men at this
moment are eager to collect : and some think they are in a fair
way of seeing some great improvement upon this head. But
let us have no recruiting-serjeantry, no stories of mountains of
beef and rivers of rum, and countries where young girls start
up out of the ground, crying *' Come eat me." Let us go on
quietly and resolutely ; and if man and officer do their duty,
we shall see some strange things before we stop. But no
tom-foolery to begin with ; no Jack the Giant-killer's expect-
ations of the impossible, which as they begin in falsehood must
of necessity end in disappointment.

The Saint-Simonians go on to state, that the ruling cause,
the most immediate reason, of the * exploitation ' of man by his
fellow-creature, is the constitution of property as it at present
stands, the transmission of wealth by inheritance in the bosom
of families^. Now let there be no mistake ; this is not saying
that the hereditary transmission of political power is a bad
invention for the happiness of mankind, nor that laws or cus-
toms which enforce or encourage what is called making an
eldest son" are either bad or indifferent, nor does it touch upon
the question (on which the French law has already gone beyond
that of most other nations) of how far the society should make
itself the instrument of executing a father's pleasure in respect
of making any posthumous inequality among his children ; —
but it goes much farther than all this, it means to say that no
man shall give what he has to his children at all, but to a Saint-
Simonian Select Vestry, which is to decide upon the merits of
little Tom and Harry, and give to each ** according to his works/'
If little Tom is a good boy, the Select Vestry is to send him to
Mr, AUgood as a clerk ; and if Mr. Allgood reports well of him,
the Select Vestry is to direct Mr. Allgood to make him his
head-clerk and marry him to his daus^hter, — always recollect-
ing that Mr. Allgood himself is to hold all he has to give, by
warrant from the same Vestry or their sub-committee. And
if Harry is a bad boy, the Select Vestry is to send him to sea,
and he is to be eaten by wild beasts beginning at the stomach,
as may be seen lively portrayed at large in the Spelling-book.

* '— Sexploitation de rhomme parson semblable.. ..: nous allons I'observer
dans le fait ^ui la domine, qui en est la raison la plus prochaine, \a. constitution
de la propriete, la transmission de la ridiesse par Z'HiiiiiTAGE dans le sein dcs
families.* — p. 178. 1- 32.

Saint- Simonianism, 8;c,

The chain of argument by which it is proved that this ought
to be, is as follows. " If the * exploitation ' of one by another has
received successive reductions since the beginning of the world ;
if ' sympathy ' says that it ought to disappear entirely ; ' if it is
true' that mankind is advancing towards a state of things in
which all men, without distinction of birth, will receive from
society the education best calculated to give their faculties all
the developement of which they may be capable, and will be
classed according to their deserts with a view to being recom-
pensed according to their works, it is clear that the present
constitution of property must be changed, because, under it,
men are born with the privilege of living without doing any-
thing, * that is to say, of living at the expense of other people,'
which is in fact the same thing as keeping up the * exploitation^
of one person by another. From one of these facts to the other,
the inference is perfectly logical — therefore send little Tom
and Harry to the Select Vestry, This is not an exaggeration ;
it is a literal translation of the Saint-Simonian logic, and the
original is below to confront it with*. It is impossible to omit
pointing out the total, complete, and unmeasured falsehood of
the assertion, that the child who lives on what its father has
given it, " lives at the expense of other people.'' If a man
has honestly raised more corn than he can eat, either the corn
is his own and he is at liberty to give it to whom he pleases, or
it is not. If it is not, then the man is interfered with in the en-
joyment of what he has honestly worked for; and if he allows
the Saint-Simonian to take it from him without crushing him
as he would any other kind of cockroach, it is nobody's fault but
his own. And if a man has a right to his corn, he has a right
to exchange it for beef, mutton, venison, pig, partridge, or
Paganini, as likes him best ; and to give an order to his sons
and daughters, lawful or unlawful, or to anybody else of what-
ever stock and origin, for such part and share of those enjoy-
ments as can be procured by any circuit of voluntary exchanges
for the bushels of corn he shall be pleased so to deliver. If any-
body says no, let there be fair warning, and he shall be fired

* • Si Ton admet que rexploitation de rhomme parrhomme s'est siiccessive-
ment affaiblie ; si la sympathie prononce qu'elle doit disparaitre entierement j
s*il est vrai que i'humanit^ s'achemine vers un etat de choses dans lequel tous
les homines, mns distinction de naissance, recevront de la societ^: I'^ducation la
plus capable de donner a. leurs facultes tout le developpement dont elles sent
susceptibles, et seront classes par elle selon leurs merites, pour etre retribues
selon leurs ceuvres, il est Evident que la constitution de la propriete doit etre
changee, puisque, en vertu de cette constitution, des hommes naissent avec le
privilege de vivre sans rien faire, c'est-a-dire de vivre aux depens d'autrui, ce
qui n'est autre chose que la prolongation de I'exploitation de Thomme par
rhomme. De Tun de ces faits I'autre peut se deduire logiquement Exposi-
tion, p. 179.

D 2

Saint' SimonianisMy ^c.

upon like any other thief. And if he comes with company, the
neighbours shall be called in to assist, by simple beat of utilita-
rian drum, and proving to them that it is for the advancement
of the general happiness that neighbours should agree to stand
by each other in such circumstances. It may be no answer to a
man to tell him he is a thief ; but it is a very energetic answer,
to tell him you can persuade the neighbours to treat him by the
rule for thieves made and provided. He may go away saying
he is an injured character ; but till he can persuade the com-
munity at large that this is true, he will profit little. When
the world is convinced their corn ought to be given to a Select
Vestry, we must all be Saint- Simonians ; but till then, there
will be a hard fight before the Select Vestry gets anything but
from such copyists of*' brother Neile" as may be in the humour
to give away.

But it is perhaps intended to be conceded, (with the excep-
tion of the influence which the Select Vestry is to possess over
the whole conduct of its subordinates), that what is commonly
called a man's own, he may dispose of during his life-time, but
not afterwards. And this brings on the question, of why and
to what extent the community acting with a view to the
increase of the general happiness, should agree and undertake
to support that kind of disposition of the property of an individual
which is called testamentary. And here, if it be once allowed
that it is for the greatest happiness that what a man obtains by
his labour he shall enjoy as he deems best,— -if it be conceded
that no invention for setting up a Select Vestry or any other
body to decide how much of every man's earnings he may law-
fully expend on his back, how much on his stomach, and how
much on education for his little boys, can in the end answer so
well, in the double direction of regulation of expenditure and
encouragement of industry, as is effected by the process of
leaving every man to be a Vestry to himself, — if all this be
conceded or can be proved, it appears to be a very little way
further to the inference (whether it may have been a trodden
path or not), that the right of testation (with all due reservation
of after examination of the consequences in every possible direc-
tion) is, prima facie, nothing but an extension of the simple
right of disposition, to the doing in a convenient way what must
otherwise be done in an inconvenient one. The Turkish Sultan
(if popular notions are correct) claims the succession to the pro-
perty of all who die, at least in certain ranks. The consequence
of this must be, that a Pasha either bestows his wealth upon his
children or others in trust for them before his death, in a way
that is probably neither for their good nor his, — or that he risks
being overtaken by the scimitar, and his children losing the pro-

Saint- Simonianism, ^c.

perty altogether. No man can lift up his hand and say this is a
good, or that it tends to good. It is obviously a trick, to give the
Sultan all that may fall out between the difficulty of telling when
a man may die, and the inconvenience of giving away what he
has before he dies. There would be just as much sense and jus-
tice, in preventing a man from drawing a bill at a month. A
testamentary bequest is only a bill payable at the end of the
month the man shall die. The pretence that children would be
better provided for by being taken care of by the community, is
directly in the teeth of all experience and analogy. Are parish
children so peculiarly well taken care of? It might absolutely
be supposed that Select Vestries and parish officers, instead of
being the objects of marked suspicion everywhere, had estab-
lished to the universal satisfaction, that they were the only
people to guide the guiders, and all honesty and discretion were
emanations from their virtues. Why does a woman take care
of her own child, and not volunteer her services as wet-nurse to
the parish ? Simply because the constitution of nature has
given the attachment of one woman to one particular child, to
be the general means of preservation for the whole. Why do
not hen- sparrows sit on each other's eggs? The Saint-Simo-
nians probably could tell why they ought. And the question is
of the same nature, with respect to a man^s taking care of his
own.

The Saint-Simonian answer to this, consists in trying to
confound the use of the right of testation with the abuse ; —
the part which men are interested in preserving, with the parts
which they have from time to time been interested in cutting
off. Men once transmitted slaves as part of their property
(alas, there is no difficulty in finding where they do so still), and
*' the law, in civilized countries, has put a stop to this* — there-
fore it ought to put a stop to the transmission of a man's
strong box. The habits, and in some sort the necessities, of
barbarous and feudal life, originated the custom of transmitting
the political power along with the wealth of the possessor, and
of accumulating both these in the person of the eldest son.
Civilized men have found their interest in breaking down this
custom, and have consequently, in different degrees and forms,
withdrawn or refused the protection of the community to
bequests having this prejudicial tendency therefore they
ought to withdraw the protection from all. The community
has assigned various ways and circumstances under which
salmon shall not lawfully be taken, all of them manifestly
innovations on the practice of barbarous times ; — the conclusion

* p. 181.

Saini'Simonianismi ^c.

from which is, that salmon ought not to be taken at all. This
is just as good a specimen as the other, of the mode of arguing
from the regulation of a right to the abolition. The Sixth
Sitting" is principally occupied with the propounding of this
particular sophism.

The " Seventh Sitting" professes to examine the comparative
merits of the old and the proposed system, on the score of
utility; which everybody must have seen long ago is where all the
strength of the question lies, and that the rest is fiddle-faddle.
The first charge against the old system is, that it does not
favour production as it ought ; by which, as stated once
before, is meant that it leaves men to their own guidance, in-
stead of that of a Select Vestry. They say that*' for industry
to arrive at the perfection it has a right to claim, it is necessary,
first, that the instruments be distributed with reference to the
wants of each local situation and each particular branch of
industry ; secondly, that they be distributed with a reference to
the capacities of the receivers, in order that they may be put
into the hands best able to employ them ; thirdly, (which is the
philosopher's stone, if they can find it), that the production be
so contrived, that there shall never be reason to fear either
want or glut in any of its branches*." And all these, they
declare, are badly provided for by the present system.

The two first of these complaints depend upon establishing
the superiority of the Select Vestry system over individual
management; with special inclusion of the injustice of a suc-
cessful manufacturer leaving his spinning-jennies to his children
instead of to the Select Vestry as aforesaid. And they have
the further weakness, that it is not proven that the just object
is to effect the greatest quantity of production ; the just object
is to effect the greatest quantity of happiness. A West-Indian
estate, with its apparatus of stocks and cow-skins, is a machine
for eff'ecting the greatest quantity of sugar ; but it is not
therefore an instance of a pattern principle. The third objection
is founded on that compound of darkness and credulity, match-
able only by the researches of the middle ages after the
perpetual motion, which has no suspicion that, under any
given circumstances it may be chosen to fix on, there must be
a limit somewhere to what can possibly be produced. The
limit may be one that is moveable to a certain extent by
human exertion and ingenuity ; but at any given moment there
is a limit, and a limit to the extension of the limit. It is a limit
of that kind which Malthus says exists to the breeding of sheep
with little heads, which, though no man can show a head it is

p. 191.

Saint' Simonianism, <^c.

impossible to surpass in smallness, it may safely be affirmed
will never be reduced to tbe size of the heads of rats, — and to
the rearing of large anemones, which, though no man can
affirm he has seen the largest possible, will never be extended
to the magnitude of a cabbage*. No person is puzzled with
such facts in common life ; it is only when men undertake to
philosophize without having provided themselves with any
fitness for success, that such things start into difficulties. On
no better foundation than this, have rested the follies that have
been said and sung on the subject of human perfectibility.
Man's perfectation is a flower that may be increased without
the possibility of showing it in a state it cannot go beyond ;
but every dunce can show the cabbage it never will arrive at.
Our well-meaning forefathers thought it a good joke to point to
the cabbage, as an answer to what sensible men meant by
perfectibility. The same kind of limit exists in the case of
production ; there is a limit to the extent to which men in the
existing state of laws and circumstances can advance it, and
there is a further limit to the extent to which any other laws
and circumstances would enable them to increase it. In the
instance of an island of a hundred acres, it is clear enough that
with a given quantity of agricultural skill and of manure, only
a certain number of families can be supported on the produce ;
and if the skill and the manure are increased, it is possible
that the number may be doubled, and that it might afterwards
be trebled, but it is plain that after the island is once well
covered with good wheat, though no man can say it shall be
impossible ever to obtain another bushel, the produce can
never be increased a hundred-fold, still less a thousand. And
the man who cannot see that this must equally be true of any
larger quantity of land, is one who would never comprehend
how if the addition of one mouth to ten in a starving boat's
crew in the middle of the ocean would be a suffering, the
addition of a hundred to a first-rate with a thousand men on
board would be the same. There are such men, as everybody
knows, who would run about delighting themselves with the
idea that in such a vast space every one of the additional hun-
dred would pick up something without any of the old crew being
the worse for it, and who would despise and reject as " theory"
whatever should maintain that the circumstances were the
same. But this does not make the conclusion wise. If it be
said that the island and the country may communicate with
foreign parts, and exchange their industry abroad, this too is
true ; but it is also true that this also must have a limit. If

* Sssay on Population. B. IILCh. 1.

Sain t- Sim onianism, ^c.

the island should unexpectedly be discovered to be all compact
of the richest commercial substances of which any example has
been found in nature, there still must be a limit. It may be a
lon^ way off, but there must be a limit somewhere ; and what
is more, a sensible man will be assured of the reality and
extent of the discovery at all, before he launches into any
speculations on the removal of the limit. Prove that production
can be increased, and everybody will be ready enough to do it.
All men are in fact engaged in a struggle to increase production,
as a swimmer struggles to increase his speed ; and they find
there is a limit. And then the swimmer is to be told, as the
means of increasing his success, that it is perfectly within his
own option to swim at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, and
afterwards increase it to a thousand, if he will only let a Select
Vestry tell him how. Want of employment and glut are not
only the constant regulators of the production in different
places and kinds, (though it is undoubtedly the interest of
everybody that they should operate by as gentle and divided
strokes as possible), but besides this, there is a perpetual ten-
dency for the happiest state of industry to bring on a period
when the excess of mouths above employment shall bring the
felicity to a conclusion, as surely as the happiest state of human
Hfe is travelling towards death. It may be , a very uneasy con-
templation to the admirers of perfect happiness, and they may
feel themselves strongly drawn out to search for the elixir of
life that shall remove the evil. But the simple sad question
still recurs, of whether the evil is removeable in the abstract at
all ; and whether the best way towards man's doing what he
can, is not to study the nature of the final fact, as the means of
discovering such palliatives and preservatives as the constitu-
tion of nature will admit. The fact that all states of production
will at some time be followed by the appearance of more mouths
than can find profitable employment, unless in the interim
some start of improvement can be made in the extent of the
resources from which this production is derived, — and that the
sum of all these starts, though it may be an infinite series in
point of number of terms, is, like the diminution of the sheep's
heads, not infinite in amount*, — is the fatal fact which, whether

* No stronger instance can be given, of the bearing of mathematical science
on Political Economy (which is in truth only mathematics applied to a parti-
cular use), than the constant recurrence of the principle, that the sum of an
infinite number of additions is not necessarily infinite in amount. It will be
infinite if the additions are all equal ; but not necessarily if they are not. For
example, it will not be infinite, if the additions successively diminish in any
given proportion, though it were only by one per cent upon each other. It
seems paradoxical, to those who have never thought of it, that a weight may be
increased every day forever, and yet never amount to an ounce. The fact, how-
ever, is, that no inference whatever can be made as to whether the amount will
be great or small, till the nature of the additions is known. This is precisely

Saint- Simoniamsm, <^c.

they consent to it or not, will for ever keep at bay the political
I alchymists, the gold-makers, who exhaust their genius in pur-
suing what there is no evidence to* show that nature ever meant
to be attained. All that is given to man, is to keep, as long as
he can, a day's march ahead of the evil ; but the evil is ever at
his heels, and the distance by which he can keep himself in
advance is all he will ever have to boast of. In any given state
of things however promising, the principle which forms the
greatest discovery of the present age, the principle which no
man that objected to it ever stated fairly or ever understood, the
principle of Population, will bring on a balance of the results
with the efforts, as surely as the resistance of fluids in the ratio
of the square of the velocity, will bring on a balance in the case
of the swimmer. It is true that its discoverer stopped, like

him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold.*'

He appears to have thought its tendency was to persuade men
to submit quietly to the cage whose existence he demonstrated ;
instead of viewing it as the discovery, which the moment the
masses understand it sufficiently to ask how there comes to be
the cage, will shatter the shackles of the commercial world, and
make man walk upon this earth as if 'the thing belonged to
him. But all this will come in time. The root of the present
mistake is here. Men make corn grow by ploughing ; the more
men the more corn, if land be at their service without restric-
tion, or even, to a certain extent, if their labour be applied in
turning over more thoroughly the soil of a given field ; — there-
fore on an island of a hundred acres, double the men must
make double the wheat, and so on ad infinitum. This is a fair
representation of what half that write on the interests of the
working classes, cannot perceive to be untrue ; and what is
worse, they are apt to call men by all kinds of ill names, who
see a little farther into the mill-stone than themselves. If they
say " people may emigrate," then comes the fact that Emigra-
tion, though it be a valve, is just such a valve as may leave
any imaginable pressure of misery according to circumstances.
The supporters of the Corn Laws are the friends of an organized
system of emigration. They consider it, (as a steam-engineer
does his valve), as producing exactly that combination of safety
and high pressure, which is most desirable for their purpose.

The arguments against competition [^concurrence'], contained
in this Sitting, all finally come aground on this rock. Granting,
for the occasion, that the Saint-Simonian Select Vestry shall

what in the House of Commons would be called " theory and political econo-
mists of name have fallen into mistakes for want of it.

Saint- Simo7iianism, <^c.

answer in the best possible way for regulating the division of
employment while there is enough for all, how will it proceed
when this ceases to be the case ? It must either give each
a starving portion, which is what it does not calculate on ; or
it must leave those to get the best portion, who can best per-
suade other men to give them it, which is no removal from the
present state of things. The truth is, the Saint-Simonian
theory is in pursuit of what the eloquence of the British Parlia-
ment denominates " a mare's nest that is, it is based on the
expectation of finding something which nature has not made
and never will.

The introduction of Banking in the same Sitting, it is fair to
state, is limited to what may be considered as the legitimate
objects of that occupation, though in the present instance
brought in aid of a baseless and impracticable theory. The
French, with the exception of the period of" assignats which
cured itself, have not been very generally bitten with what may
be properly called an English and Scottish mania. If, like our-
selves, they have not made good use of the fact that any nation
may without danger save itself the whole amount of the metallic
coinage, by employing a paper limited to the quantity which will
cause the note to purchase a certain standard quantity of gold, —
they have at all events not fallen into' the insanity of calling for
issues of superlluous paper whose value is to be created by a
corresponding sinking of the value of the currency at large in
the pockets of the holders ; nor the still greater unreasonable-
ness of demanding that the gain, legitimate or illegitimate, from
paper money, should be divided among such private persons as
find it convenient to take it. Upon both these points, the Saint-
Simonians have a right to claim the credit of having been ** sages,
tres-sages,^^

The " Eighth Sitting " opens with a passage which appears
decisive, within certain limits at least, of the question whether
the Saint-Simonians 7'egret the inroads which " criticism" has
made on the ** organic " periods, or whether they meant merely
to state that such things were. The tone of the book through-
out had a strong tendency to bring the reader to an earlier de-
cision ; but any premature inference has been cautiously ab-
stained from.

f During the three centuries it took to effect the destruction of social
order as constituted in the middle ages, the steadiest defenders of the
papal government and the feudal institutions have strongly felt the
fact, that THE UNITY of religion and the hierarchy political or military
once broken in upon, it was all over with a state of things they looked
back on with affection. Their efforts have been useless : the institu-
tion of nobility is defunct ; the liberty of different modes of worship

Saint-Simonianism, ^c.

has been proclaimed. De Maistue, De i.a Mennais^ De Mont-
LosiER,have nobly expressed their regrets and indignation ; they have
covered with their contempt this new form of society, stripped of either
authority or faith, given up to indifference and anarchy, and widowed
of its ancient memories ; but their funeral chants, drowned by the
shouts of the conquering party, have had no effect upon the masses,
or if they have been heard, have excited nothing but anger and hatred.
Some individuals have responded to them with warmth, and repeated
them from conviction ; but very few have been able to appreciate all
there was that was great, and at the same time that was feeble, in
these last sighs of the expiring middle age*.'

This seems conclusive. The Saint-Simonians are not the
middle ages, but they will be as like them as they can. They
are a reproduction of the old fallacy, " Give us all power, and
you shall see how happy we will make you." It is only Jesuitism
en blouse.

Passing this, the Eighth Sitting proceeds to observations on
the opinions of everybody who has mentioned property. This
big word " property," they say, has been put forward to mean
very different things. It is quite true ; the possessors of the
Italian boy claimed his body as property as long as they could ;
the West-Indians do the same, with the bodies in their pos-
session ; but the serious question is, how many of these claims
society will finally agree to support. A highwayman claims
property in what he has taken on the high road ; and the
answer to his plea is, that society has been jformed for the ex-
press purpose of supporting the claim of his opponents, and of
knocking on the head such claims as his. This is precisely
the answer which will be made to the slave-holders, when the
time comes. The Saint-Simonians and they, unite, though
for different purposes, in trying to mystify the difference be-
tween honest and dishonest property, — belAveen such as society
has combined to support, and such as it has combined to hunt
down.

M. Say, and the political economists at large, are charged

* ' Pendant les trois siecles qui ont opere la destruction de Tordre social con-
stitue au moyen age, les plus fermes defenseurs du gouvernement papal et de
la feodalite ont bien senti que l'unite religieuse et la iiierarchie politique ou
militaire une fois entamees, e'en etait fait d'un passe qu'ils cherissaient. Leurs
eflforts ont ete vains : la noblesse est morte ; la liberie des cultes est proclamee.
De Maistre, De la Mennais, De Montlosier, ont exprime noblement leurs
regrets et leur indignation; ils ont convert de leurs mepris cette societe
nouvelle, privee d'autnrite et de foi, Irvree a I'indifFerence et a I'anarchie, veuve
de ses antiques souvenirs ; mais leurs chants fun^bres, etouffes par les cris des
vainqueurs, n'ont pas touche les masses, ou s'ils ont ete entendus, ils n'ont
excite que la colere et la haine. Quelques individus y ont repondu avec chaleur,
les ont repetes avec conviction j mais bien peu ont su apprecier tout ce qu il y
avait de grand, et en meme temps, de faible dans ces deruiers soupirs du moyen
age ex^'u^ni,'— Exposition, p. 214.

Saint' Simonianism, ^c.

with speaking in general terms of the necessity of supporting
the rights of property ; and are asked, whether they mean to
blame Christianity for not respecting the claims of slavery and
vassalage. The answer seems to be, that in the present state
of society the claims of the robber and the slave-holder present
so comparatively small an object, that political economists may
be excused for overlooking them in the general term.

M. De Sismondi is accused of having done something, but
not enough, to attack that principle of legislators, "which has
always been for allowing people to keep in ease, what they have
gained by toil*." The instances given, resolve themselves into
his having opposed what may be assumed to have been the
leading error of the French sect called the ** economistes," the
opinion that there was some extraordinary virtue or national
profit, in that portion of production which goes into the form
of rent ; an opinion founded on the simple fallacy of overlook-
ing, that all that goes into the pocket of the rent-owner, must
come out of the pocket of somebody else.

Mai thus and Ricardo are stated to have arrived at the con-
clusion, "that the difference in the qualities of land, permits a
part of the produce of some, to be applied to other purposes
than the maintenance of the cultivators." Passing over any
error in this conclusion, whose ever it may be, which consists in
representing the difference of qualities of land as the cause of
the existence of rent, instead of being only the cause of the
differences in its amount t, — they are blamed for coming hastily
to the conclusion, that rent should be at the disposal of the

• * — I'opinion des legislateurs, qui ont toujours voulu qu'on put gsirder dans
le repoSf ce qu'on avait acquis par le travail.'' — Exposition, p. 222. I. 18.

t If a man of six feet and another of five, wade through a ford of four feet,
one will be two feet out of the water and the other one ; but it would be a
mistake to say their ditference of heights was the cause of the primary phaeno-
menon, which is the water's being four feet deep, — or that the water would not
equally have been of this depth, if all the men in the world had been of the
same height. This is the kind of mistake that has been made respecting the
cause of rent. The consequences do not divide, till arriving at the question of
tithes ; and then the right set leads to the conclusion that the abolition of tithes
would be a bonus to the landlords, and the other to the consumers. The com-
munity would look very foolish, if, by a miscalculation on this point, it should
allow itself to be made to pay for the commutation of the tithe, and so put the
amount into the pockets of the landlords.

It is well never to lose an opportunity of impressing this. Because there is a
fallacy abroad, which consists in saying the two explanations have no essential
difference. And it is peculiarly important at this time, when there appears to
be a disposition to stir up the subject of Tithes. The clergy, who have among
them men quite able to grapple with a question of political geometry, are in-
terested above all others in understanding the real state of the case, and com-
muting a dangerous kind of property in a manner advantageous to all parties, on
some plan like that proposed by the late Professor of Political Economy in the
University of Oxford in his Letter to Lord Howick. It is to be hoped some-
thing of this kind in Ireland, is what ministers mean by "improving the cou^
dition of the clergy."

Saint -Simonianism, <^c.

owner of the land. And here the, debate must be cut short
by coming at once to the question of utihty, and asking whether
in the cultivation of a new country, as for instance North
America, — and all countries have been new at some time, — it
would be politic and useful to say, " Cultivate your land as fast
as you are able, but remember, the moment any of you succeeds
in bringing a piece into a condition to pay any rent, the rent
shall be taken from you by somebody else and whether, if
this would be impolitic, there would ever come a season when
it would be politic and useful to utter a similar announcement
in a country, — and that includes all countries, — which had
grown up under the preceding process. And the Saint- Simo-
nians must not be allowed to entangle the question, with whe-
ther rent be a good subject for taxation,~or whether it be an
enormity deserving to be abated by the pitchforks of the posse
comitatus, that the owners of rent should rob with a six-pounder
on the high road by means of Corn Laws. The question is not
either of these, but whether honest rent is to be left in the hands
of the owner of the land, or is to be given to a Saint-Simonian
committee that wants to have the disposal of it.

In their attack on *' Legistes et Puhlicistes^' the Saint-
Simonians take imperfect definitions of " property" and
" liberty," and then crow over their success in attacking them.
Property they represent as being " the right of absolute dispo-
sition of certain things, in any way not prohibited by law
and liberty, as " the right of doing anything which the laws do
not forbid^ Now both these are manifestly only lawyer's de-
finitions. The real definition, both of property and liberty, is
the right of unlimited disposition in all ways which public utility^
or the promotion of the greatest happiness, does not prohibit ;
and law is only the limping agent, by which the public utility,
tant bien que mal is professed to be promoted. And this brings
the whole to the question of utility, or in other words, of the
desirableness of Select Vestries.

The " Ninth Sitting" is on Education. All sects and parties
look forward to education ; some fairly, the most part unfairly.
The Jesuits say, let us teach all men to be Jesuits from their
cradles, and you shall see what merry Jesuits the world will be.
The Church of England, or a substantial part of it, says the
same. The question is a somewhat complicated one. Children
must be taught something, before they can be taught reasons.
A boy must be told to steal or not to steal, to lie or not to lie,
before he is capable of judging for himself whether stealino*
and lying are for the general happiness. The fair conclusion
perhaps is, that that is the best education, which is luckiest in
instillmg the greatest number of true truths before the scholar

Saint' Simonianism^ <^c.

is capable of judging for himself, and along with it the greatest
capability for judging of truth for himself afterwards. " What
is a good education," is therefore only a ramification of Pilate's
question, "What is truth?" Hence there appears to be a
general necessity for cutting off that part of an argument
which says, " Our sect will be acknowledged the best of all
sects, if you will only enable us to train up all the world to
think so."

The ** Tenth Sitting'* continues the subject of Education.
It discusses the relative merits of reason [raisonnement] and
feeling [sentiment'] as guides for the investigation of truth ;
and leans towards the latter. The juster conclusion would have
been, that feeling and reason often go together, sometimes not ;
and that man, to please some incomprehensible power, has been
placed as on an arena, to practise himself in bringing his feeling
into subjection to his reason.

The ** Eleventh Sitting" is a continuation of the same sub-
ject. The " Twelfth" is entitled. On Legislation. It speaks
lightly of the institution of juries, as founded on mistrust of
the magistracy t : and regrets canonization, excommuni cation,
and indulgences, as gone-by means of preserving order among
the citizens It promises to enter on the theory of punish-
ments, and the organization of the body appointed to apply
this theory to the different social actions The reader will
take notice, that he has never arrived at the most important
point of all, which is, who is to inake the laws that somebody
is to apply. He will probably have begun to suspect, that this
is the mystery of mysteries, and to be curious to know who in
the end will be found to have kept it for themselves. Repres-
sive means are to be very gentle, &c., there are to be no autos
da fe\\ ; '* but this is not it," we want the law-makers. All
modifications in the divers codes that are to be, are to be made
by *' the individuals who are most capable of appreciating their
justice and utility But how are the men to be determined?
There may be more who think they have capacity, than can get
into the legislative hall ; and who is to strike the difference?
A hint touching counts and barons of industry intimates
that they are to be " organized as a hierarchy according to
merit but who is to settle the merit? The world stands on
a tortoise ; but what is the tortoise to stand on ? Stick close to
the question, and you will doubtless know in the end. Each
division, as commune, village, town, or nation, is to have a
" reglement d'ordre" [in English, a I3ook of Rules and Regu-

* p. 267. 1. 28. t P- 307. 1 27. X P, 308. /. 14. § p. 309. 1 31,
!1 p. 310, /. 20. ^ p. 322. 1 30. *♦ p. 324. I, 24.

Saint- Simonianism, <^c.

lations] for industry, and a committee of " capable men" to
cause it to be " observed or modified;" and " there you have
the composition of the magistracy as regards industry Still,
what is to be the mode of election of a *' capable man ?" Is it
to be by the householders, or in the mode in which the Dutch
in simple times are said to have elected a burgomaster ! But
*' you are not to forget, gentlemen, that the future, on our plan,
is to know nothing of those endless and hateful discussions
about property t." Nevertheless, if anybody will quarrel, the
committee is to be the arbitrator J. There are to be no disputes
about widows or minors ; because the committee of the '* com-
mune" commune'' is pretty nearly French for parish ; the
parish committee, — we all know parish committees,] is to take
care of them all, instead of leaving them to " the direct and
so frequently blind provision, that might be made for them by
individuals to wit their husbands and fathers. And " as
there is to be no transmission of property, either during life or
after death, but in the form of a bargain for time ; all sales,
disposals of interests, wills, transfers, pledges, mortgages, as-
signments, &c. are to be unknown ||." This is to lead to '* the
disappearance of the whole cloud of keepers of records, attor-
neys, advocates, lawyers, and men of business, who are now
continually employed in settling and keeping up those rights,
which are all to be settled by an appeal to the arbitration of the
* heads of the industry department for since the distribution
of all proceeds is to be in their hands, of course disputes about
property can be carried nowhere else This is all. It is to
be the republic of " Mon Oncle Thomas where all men were
to be free and equal, but everything was to be done according
to the directions of the Grand Regulator. Who is to be Grand
Regulator here, is never settled ; what the tortoise stands upon
is never found.

It is almost lost words to say, that a boy of fifteen should be
whipped and soundly, who had made such bad use of his oppor-
tunities of gaining knowledge, as to hold for eight-and-forty
hours to a scheme so unlicked, so feeble, and so swept of
everything like manly wisdom, (assuming honesty), as this.
If it is not honest, then the case comes under the head of
ring-dropping ; which is a diff'erent category.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth
" Sittings" introduce Religion. On which it is enough to
state, and leave every man to decide on its truth by his experi-
ence, — that there never was but one class of men that needlessly

* p. 325. 1. 11. t U. I. 13.

n Id. L 27.

X Id. I 16. & Id. I. 24.

f p. 326. 1. 1. et seq.

Saint- Simonianism, <^c*

introduced religion as the instrument of settling men's temporal
affairs, and but one other class that ever have submitted to it.
The world wants honest lawgivers, not pious ones. If piety
will make men honest, let them favour us with the honesty,
and keep the piety for God and their own consciences. There
never was a man that brought piety upon the board when
honesty would do, without its being possible to trace a transfu-
sion in the shape of money or money's worth, from his neigh-
bour's pocket into his. The object of puzzling the question with
religion is clear. You cannot quarrel for sixpences, with the
man who is helping you the way to heaven. The man who wants
your sixpences, therefore, assumes a religious phraseology,
which is cant ; and cant is fraud, and fraud is dishonesty, and
the dishonest should have a mark set on them. There is no
reason why measure should be kept with men, who stoop to
call themselves Father," and pick up the shabbiest falsehood
in the sink of despotism, for the chance of persuading silly men
and women to prove the paternity by making their ancestor
their heir.

The Fifteenth " Sitting" is a digression on the work of M.
Auguste Comte entitled " Third Part of the Working-man's
Catechism."

The pamphlet next cited in the head of the Article, throws
light on the Saint-Simonian ideas of government, as well as
of what is announced as the particular subject. After date &c.
it begins,

" Our Father Enfant in said :
Dear Children/' ....

Horns and a tail would not be more decisive to a frightened
child at midnight, than such a beginning ought to be, to every
man of common experience and good sense, of the character
to be expected in the remainder of the thing that carries it.
Nothing that is honest, ever before presented itself under such
a formula; but there may be novelties under the sun. The
** Father" begins, in a style evidently meant to be copied from
the Christian scriptures, to inform his children that he had
always told them a time of anarchy must come, and that it was
needful for them to pass through it before they could arrive at
what was perfect and complete. The authority under which
they had lived hitherto, he tells them, was despotic. " TFe
[which means He] had done much ; but for all that, power is in
what is, and not what has been ; it is here, it is alive, it is before
you * to wit, Father Enfantin.

* Seance du samedi 19 novemhre, p. 2. /. 12.

Saint- Simonianism, <^c.

He proceeds to recal the transactions of the last three years.

* When we founded the hierarchy, I cal/ed Bazard to partake with
me the supreme authority.'

Father Enfantin, therefore, was the fons et origo. He was
the Grand Regulator, the " Oncle Thomas.'^

* Hazard [the shabby fellow] asked for time to reflect ; time ! and
so all our life was to be spent, in going to one and to the other.'

* From that time to this, it is I that have originated all that has
been thought, all that has been done in the way of the doctrine. I
have originated it in the face of the contmual opposition of Bazard,
of Bazard who was everlastingly demanding time for reflection.'

' The dogma was laid down [Father Enfantin is the dogma] ;
Bazard disputed it ; and for all that, Bazard put it into shape, and in
such a way as answered all the objections he had made to it
himself.'

This is tolerably decisive of Father Enfantin's ideas of good
government — Good government is, Father Enfantin. He goes
on to complain, that Bazard had been busying himself with the
July Revolution, — troubling himself, apparently, with good
and bad forms of government, — instead of pushing the Saint-
Simonian doctrine as he was desired. Enfantin and Bazard
appear to have been two young cuckoos in one nest ; and the
public is introduced to the process by which " the elder and
more terrible" proceeds to turn the other out.

Father Enfantin goes on to state, that " he has demonstrated
by his labours ever since their commencement, that he and not
Bazard was in position to call for Woman. All his works (he
says) bore tokens of this desire. Bazard, on the contrary, said
not a word about it. Bazard thought the times required male
virtues* Enfantin wished to show a catholic spirit, and have
the due proportion of female also. Man and Woman, he says,
make a social individual; but ** I'exploitation de la femme par
I'homme existe encore, et c'est la ce qui constitue la necessite
de notre apostolatt."

Follows much, about the " problem of man and woman J,"
and how the " etres a affections profondes" would repulse the
** etres a affections vivos" and vice versa, if it was not for the
mediating influence of the Priest §. Divorce is to be admitted,
because it is necessary for the preservation of such individuals
as are gifted with *' I'amour progressif," which is defined to be

* ' J'avais, par mes travaux dans la doctrine, depuis le moment ou s'etait fait
sentira nos ames la foi religieuse, indique que j'etais seul de nous deux en
position d'appeler la fbmmb. Tons mes travaux portaient I'empreinte de ce
d^sir. Bazard, au contraire, n'en parlait pas ; Bazard pensaitque la vie politique
dans laquelle nous ^tions, et ou nous continuions a marcher, etait telle que nous
avions surtout a developper parmi nous, et en face des hommes, des vertus
MALES pour &c.' — Seance da 19 novemhre, p. 4.

t p. 6. Lb. t p.8. § p. 10.

VOL. II. E

Saint' Simoniamsm, <^c.

loving first one and then another*. Divorce is consequently
divided into three cases ; viz. where the parties only agree in not
loving one another ; where both parties are respectively in love
with somebody else ; and where the necessity arises from only
one of them being so affected f. The conclusion is, that Father
Enfantin recommends there shall be " manages successifs J,"
but " the limit, the time, the duration" [does '*the hmit" mean
how many at once?] he says he must leave to the ladies to
settle, and then hurries away from the question, as if he meant
to intimate the rest was indecent.

But Father Enfantin has not the whole to himself ; for on
his saying that " he stands alone at the head of the doctrine"
(meaning, apparently, that he stands without a woman to help
him), Pierre Leroux "interrupts with vivacity." Pierre charges
him with setting up a doctrine which has been rejected by the
*' college,'' and says he shall withdraw. The Father answers
by prosing about the difficulty of maintaining equality between
men and women of affections profondes " and men and women
of affections vivos." A squabble ensues ; in which others
join on both sides. Father Enfantin, who was to bring the
whole world into such orderly order, is tossed about on a sea of
disputation. Many glimmerings of common-sense display them-
selves among his opponents, which only excite wonder by what
malice of the daemon such people came there. One speaker
warns the women in the galleries against the Father, and the
women in the galleries cry " Oui, oui r He accuses the Father
of having only told half He replies, he has told it all to the
*' college." The accusant says, he knows that, and he knows
what it was, too. The Father replies, " that his theory was,
that his ideas on woman were neither obligatory nor to be prac-
tised at the present moment, and that anybody who should
attempt to practise, or lead others to practise, new notions on
the relations of man and woman, would be no Saint-Simo-
nian §." Subsequent disputants state the charges meant, to be
promiscuous intercourse!! and adultery^. Father Enfantin
protests against the possibility of his doctrine leading to adul-
tery. He is told, that if he has no such thing as adultery, it is
because he has made adultery the general rule"^*. The dispute
is carried on through another Sitting. The dissidents retire ;
and Father Enfantin declares, that " as the means of realizing
the liberty of the Saint-Simonian women, he shall begin by
destroying the hierarchical distinctions which have hereto-
fore existed among the women as well as men, and making
them all return to a state of equality among themselves." It

* p. 12. L 4. + p. 15. iA^. t p. 15. /. 32. § p. 3?. /. 27^

I p. 41. I 7. f p. 42. /. 17. ** p. 42. L 23.

Saint- Simoniamsm, ^c.

is announced in large letters, that there are no more women in
the hierarchy. The apostieship, is to be an apostleship of men.
Man may be classed in ranks, because he has long been free
as regards the woman ; but woman may not be classed, " till
herself shall have been revealed'*'." The Father takes an empty
arm-chair, and puts it as a symbol that woman is not there f.
Woman, he says, is " in a state of being called and by way
of helping her, he turns her out. The dissidents are gone ;
and as may be conceived, the rest of the assembly conclude by
crying '* 0^<^ oui to everything that is said.

If the poor women are not " exploitees'^ here by Father
Enfantin, there is no truth in man or woman. There can be
no doubt that the political inequality of woman is a remnant
of the barbarous state, which will be removed exactly as that
state is receded from, and that a time will come when the equal
rights of women will be made a powerful lever by somebody.
But Father Enfantin is manifestly not the man.

Follows a " Note on Marriage and Divorce,'' by Father
Rodrigues. It announces that a man is to have only one wife
at a time ; and is only to have many, one after another J. It
contains lucubrations on the nature of marriage, which are at
all events needless. In all cases of this kind, a remote flavour
— what a French cook calls a soupgon — of indelicacy is the
charm. True delicacy is to faille des enfans and say no more
about it. People like the Saint-Simonians, never think they
can say enough. The case may be different in France ; but
in England every blockhead knows all that is necessary,
without occasion to call a Vestry meeting.

If a naturalist were discussing the connexions of birds, it
would be very strange if he did not remark, that their attach-
ments last for a summer, which is the period demanded for
bringing up their young. It is worthy of notice that the Saint-
Simonians in all their discussions never once allude to the fact,
that the well-being of the human progeny, prolonged as the
case is by the succession of younger children, demands as im-
periously, that in the biped without feathers the general rule
should be attachment for life.

Finally, no further light is ever thrown on the mystery of
the right of governing. The nearest that can be come to it, is
that the mode of propagating a Father appears to be, that he
is to be called by his predecessors. It is to be a government of
the most cunning, modified by what the rest will bear.

The remaining subjects cited at the head of the Article, have
bonds of connexion with the Saint-Simoniari theories too strong

* p. 55.

t p. 56. /. 10.
E 2

X p. 61. 4,

Saint- Simomaniasmi ^c.

to be overlooked ; though it is not denied, that good of various
kinds may arise from their agitation, in the same manner as
the alchymists were the instruments of turning out many useful
discoveries. A state of activity, even though not altogether right,
is better than one of torpor ; the only very important evil the
world is capable of, saving the impact of a comet, would
be the arrival of one of the ** organic epochs'' of the Saint-
Simonians.

The opinions of the Saint-Simonians are reproduced on this
side of the Channel in an octavo volume by John Gray
with the addition of a new discovery, on " The Principle of
Exchange.'' The principle resolves itself into a proposal that
the government should issue a kind of billets or bank-notes to
every person who chuses to lodge property in certain ware-
houses, and the billets are to be circulated as money. The
effect of this, it is supposed, would be, to produce *' a market
ad infinitum*."

' Produce without any limit ; call in the aid of magic, if you please,
to increase the respective products of labour, and stili the market can
never be overstocked, nor can any difficulty be experienced in selling,
for a fair price, that which you produce.' — p. 26.

The mistake is simply in believing, that such billets, when
they came to be multiplied, would go on purchasing the same
amount of commodities they were first given for. It is a repe-
tition of the fallacy produced in one form by Pitt and Sinclair,
and in another by those who call for the issue of Bank of Eng-
land notes to anybody who will lodge property in return. There
is such a thing as depreciation ; which the moment the medium
of whatever kind in circulation exceeds a certain amount,
causes the value of all additions to its numerical volume to be
swallowed up, by reducing the value of the whole circulating
medium in the pockets of the holders, to the same value as be-
fore the increase. Suppose the proposed billets to have super-
seded all other kinds of circulating medium, and that forty
millions of them are just sufficient to carry on the business of
the country as at present. Let the number in circulation be
made fifty millions, and the exchangeable value of each billet,
— the quantity of beef and butter that will be to be had for it in
the market, — will fall in exactly the proportion of four to five ;
and what will have been gained by that? Or in other words
prices will rise, and the same quantity of things that used to be
bought with four bits of dirty paper, will now be only to be bought
with five. Any simpletons can make bits of paper legal tender,
and declare that they are equal in public estimation to some-

* ' Social System, p. 1?. U 1.'

Saint' Simonianism, <f^c.

thing else though they are passing for three-fourths of the value
under their noses. But all the conjurors on earth cannot pre-
vent the rise of prices which will make the increased number of
bits of paper buy only the same quantity in the market as the
old. Some have tried a maximum^ which means everybody
taking what they like ; but nobody liked it in the end except
the thieves. If it is urged that the billets could not be depre-
ciated, because on the first hint of depreciation, holders might
have the commodities out of the national warehouse on demand,
— the question arises, whether they are to have the the commo-
dities at the old market prices or today's. If at the old, the
plan will not go on a week without all the commodities in pledge
being taken out, whereby the plan will be put into the category
of things non-existent. If at today's, nobody will take the trou-
ble of asking for the commodities, and so the depreciation will
go on as stated. It is to be feared the plan is thus in the figure
the ancients called a crocodile. If the representation was limi-
ted to saying that by substituting this paper-money to a certain
amount, there might be a saving to somebody of all the gold
that would be dispensed with as an instrument of circulation,
this is nothing but what it has long been earnestly endeavoured
to press upon the public. But it is not ; the representation is,
that it would give us Fortunatus's wishing-cap. The subject
of depreciation is a complicated one, and cannot be gone further
into here, except by reference to the Article in the First Num-
ber of this Review*, where it has been treated of at large.

There are probably few schoolboys who have not at some
time meditated on the prodigious convenience it would be, if
the gingerbread-merchant would only take pebbles instead of
halfpence, and if other shopkeepers would only agree to support
him by taking them from one another in like manner. And it
is likely there may have been considerable racking of youthful
brains, to know why so promising a plan should not be imme-
diately reduced to act. The reason is simply here, — depreciation.
If the shopkeepers were to start with ever so virtuous a resolu-
tion to take each pebble for a halfpenny, they would find, that
though they might persist in this, the art of man could not pre-
vent ounce rolls from rising in price, first to two pebbles, then
to four, then to eight, and finally to as tremendous a mul-
titude as the farthings that were given for the horse that had
eight nails in each shoe. Prices would rise, in fact, till all men

* The Article on the " Inj?trument of Exchange," from the Westminster
Review for 1 January, 1825. (See Appendix). Republished with Additions ap-
propriate to the period of republication. Addressed to the Fund-holders and
the Labouring Classes. Second Edition, with corrections and additions.
1830.

Saint' Simojiianismy <^c.

became pebble -merchants till cart-loads of gravel, and wheel-
barrosvfuUs for small change, circulated in the community at
something about the present market price of that commodity.
The proposed bank-notes (if not allowed to be returned at the
old prices) would go on in the same manner, till they settled
at the value per waggon-load, which they might possess as old
and by no means cleanly paper*.

Another of the same author's mistakes is so odd, that it is
impossible to avoid noticing it.

* The whole science of political economy, or how to make wealth,"
may be reduced to a simple receipt, — to one as plain as any in The
Cook's Oracle, Thus, — Take due portions of land, labour, and capital,
pound them well up together in a mortar, and the wealth is made.
Note, — Capital is made of land and labour, so that your wealth never
need be of insufficient quantity, until you have exhausted your stock
of one of these two ingredients, provided your mortar be not too
small.'

' The mortar is all that is wanted : at present, we have no mortar.
See to it, ye politicians and &e.' — p. 197.

In this there is only the omission, that what comes out of
the mortar must be as good as what was put in, and a little
more to keep the pounder, — or else vi^hat is compounded is not
wealth but poverty. The simple existence of this necessity, is
what brings all this race of apothecaries to a stand- still.

The *' Outline of the Rational System of Society" contains
five " Fundamental Facts twenty dicta entitled " The Con-
stitution and Laws of Human Nature, or Moral Science of

* A passaofe in the treatise attributed on dubious authority to Piato under the
title of the Eryxias, proves the agitation of a question of this nature at a very
early period. Whether he was Plato or not, the wise old Greek who wrote it,
(ail the Greeks were old, and consequently wise), appears to liave had a suspi-
cion there was something he did not understand.

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KiKTYiirSoii. Kcu 'TfXoutrtuTocTo; iivcci' il ri? 'PTct^ Y]fjb7v 'TTXiiffrcc rotctvra. xiKTn-
fjtivo; iir,, ovhlv civ fji^ocXXov '^Xowiog ilv]) il '^'^i^Pov? 'ttoXXoc; 7mv Ik tou o^ov;
zX,oi. — Eryxias. Plato Aldi, II. p. 401.

• For, for instance, those Carthaginian people use a money of this kind.
There is tied up in a little leather bag something most commonly about the
size of a gold ounce ; but what it is that is tied up in it, nobody knows except
the doers. After which they seal it up, and pass it as money. And he that
has the most of these, is held to have the most wealth and be the richest
man. But if anybody with us had ever so many of such kind of things, he
would not be a bit richer than if he had a number of the pebbles from the
hill.'

It might be concluded from this, that the Carthaginians had a leather cur-
rency. The seal spoken of, — to make the thing feasible, — must have been the
atamp of either a public or a private bank.

Saint-Simonianismy ^c.

Man twelve ** Conditions requisite for Human Happiness
six. heads of *' The Science of Society, or Social State of
Man a " Creed and Duties of the ReUgion of the System,"
in seven articles ; two illustrations of the assertion that '* A
Rational Government will attend solely to the Happiness of the
Governed twenty-nine clauses of " A General Constitution
of Government, and Universal Code of Laws, derived from the
Constitution and Laws of Human Nature," of which four are
" On the Liberty of Mind or Conscience, " three " On the Irre-
sponsibility of Man," seven *'0n Providing for, and Educating
the Population," six " On the General Arrangements for the
Population," seven On the Government of the Population,
and Duties of the Council," and two (a brief allowance for a
nisi prius lawyer) " On the Adjustment of Differences
moreover four Conclusions" and three " Concluding Re-
marks ;" the whole on so much of a sheet of post paper as will
leave room for directing it as a letter by the general post.
Nineteen out of twenty of the statements contained in these
different members, are so manifestly true, as to excite no
feeling but one of wonder why they came there. It will be
sufficient to notice such as present any possibility of dispute.

In Law of Human Nature No. IX, it is said that an indi-
vidual must necessarily become irrational" when he is made
from infancy to receive as truths false notions ; and can only
" become rational" when the contrary. It must be assumed
that by " irrational" and "rational" is meant reasoning " ill"
and ''well." In Law No. XIV, that "each individual's whole
character, physical, mental, and moral, is formed independently
of himself," appears to be too broad a statement ; many indi-
viduals form great part of their own character themselves. The
** Conditions requisite for Human Happiness" are not bad ;
people in general would be passably content with them. The
heads of the " Science of Society'' are all inexpugnable ; saving
always the question of w^here the knowledge is to be found.
The " Creed and Duties" will not find favour with the lovers
of " ceremonial worship," but are otherwise in the main good ;
with the exception of an apocryphal article at the end, which
says that certain things may be done without chance of failure,
by agreeing with the Rational System of Society— meaning the
present sheet of post paper. The idea of the business of a
" Rational Government" is very rational. Of the " Universal
Code of Laws," Law No. VI I is of questionable tenor, *' No
one shall be responsible for the feelings and convictions within
him, and which are to him the truth, while they continue."
It is to be feared within Bishop and Williams were " feelings

Saint' Simonianism, ^c.

and convictions," that it was proper to burke the Italian
boy.

The difficulty hitherto may have been small ; but the next
turn makes amends. Law No. VIII provides, that

* Every one shall be equally provided through life, with the best
of every thing for human nature, by public arrangements ; which ar-
rangements shall give the best known direction to the industry and
talents of every individual.'

This is manifestly the plan as before, of sw^imming first a
hundred miles an hour, and then a thousand. It is an expec-
tation founded on the neglect of all the opposing forces.

Law No. XV says, that under the Rational System of
Society, after the children have been trained to it,

there shall be no useless private property.''

This enactment, when it comes to be put in force, will cause
considerable anxiety in the City. It is oracular. Does it mean
there shall be no private property of the kinds that nobody can
use ; or that there shall be none of that universally useless
thing known by the name of private property ? Reasonable
doubts may arise on this. The language of legislation should
be clear.

The next enactment says, that

* As soon as the members of these communities shall have been
educated from infancy in a knowledge of the laws of their nature ;
trained to act in obedience to them ; and surrounded by circumstan-
ces all in unison with them ; there shall be no individual punish-
ment or reward.'

This is the ** Training" fallacy. Let us train everybody our
way, and then everybody will do well Everybody has been
training everybody since the days of Solomon ; the question
therefore rests entirely on the proof, that the *' Rational Sys-
tem" is the thing that will make everybody do well.

Society is not to be composed, as at present, of single families,
but of communities of from three hundred to two thousand.
As these communities increase in number, they are to be formed
in tens, hundreds, thousands, &c. No description is given of
how they are to swarm ; for swarm they must, if they are
never to exceed two thousand. Each of these communities, it
is also enacted, *' shall possess around it, land sufficient for the
support, for ever, of all its members, even when it shall contain
the maximum in number." It is not explained what is to be
done next. Great improvements have been made in an opera -
tion upon cavalry horses in India ; but it may be doubted
whether they will ever be carried so far as to come within
the Rational System of Human Happiness.

Saint- Simonianism, <^c.

After all the community has been properly trained, the
powers of government are to be exercised by all the members,
male and female, between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five.
Without debating the immediate application, it may be sus-
pected that here is one of the alchymists' discoveries. It is
manifest that as a modification of universal suffrage, the assign-
ing of a term of age giv.es the power of striking a perfectly fair
average through the whole of society, of any dimensions that
may be found convenient. If there was any dispute about the
proper time of life, this also might be settled by making a great
number of proper times. For example, if all persons were to
have a vote between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two,
thirty-one and thirty-two, forty-one and forty-two, and so on to
the age of Methuselah if anybody reaches it, — the number
would be a little more than half of that proposed by the *' Ra-
tional System," and might be altered to any extent either way,
by altering the length of the voting period here stated at a year.
Such an arrangement would make an amalgamation of the
diffierent ages, as near to the proportion which would exist un-
der universal suffrage, as can reasonably be desired. It is
something to have discovered, that a system of fair universal
representation is at all events perfectly easy as regards num-
ber.

Law No. XXVI is threatening to some people. Nobody
that has been trained &c. is to be punished. But if they
do not ** think and act rationally,'* (that is, according to
the Rational System), they are to be removed by the Coun-
cil to the Hospital for bodily, mental, or moral invalids
which of course means neither a gaol nor a mad-house.
Common-sense, like love, though it be shut out at the door, is
sure to fly in at the window ;—it is what we must all come to.

By the clauses on the Adjustment of Differences," if the
general council shall ever attempt to contravene the laws of
human nature, " which is scarcely possible," the elders of the
community who have passed the council, are to call a general
meeting of all the members of the association men and women
above sixteen, and they " shall calmly and patiently investi-
gate," and determine by a majority. And if the majority de-
cides against the council, it is to be deposed, and the members
who have passed the council and are under fifty years of age,
and those who have not yet entered it and are above thirty, are
to reign in its stead. What is to be done in case the new coun-
cil behaves no better, is not distinctly stated ; possibly there is
to be a Restoration, and so on toties quoties. All other diffe-
rences of any description, " if indeed it be possible for any to
exist in these communities," are to be " immediately deter-

Saint Simonianism, c^c.

mined, and amicably adjusted," by the decision of a majority
of the three senior members of the council.

The " Conclusions" and Concluding Remarks" declare
that the time is near at hand, and no human power can resist
the change. The old system of ignorance and poverty is to
be utterly destroyed; individual competition (apparently the
Saint- Simonian " concurrence^), and national wars throughout
the world, are to be rooted up.

^ Lectures explanatory of this New System will be delivered by
Robert Owen and his Disciples, on Sunday Mornings at Eleven, and
Evenings at half-past Seven o'Clock, and on Wednesday Evenings
at Eight o'clock, at his Institution, Burton Street, Burton Crescent.
The first Lecture on Sunday the Tenth day of April, 1831.'

Mr. Owen is quite right to pull the ass out of the ditch on
Sundays if he can. There was no known exception either,
against the man who should be mistaken in thinking there was
an ass, or that he could pull it out.

The " Co-operative" System appears to embody most of the
peculiarities of the " Rational," with some extension on parti-
cular points. The " Co operatives'* say that capitalists get
rich ; and so they desire to be capitalists. It is very fair they
should do it if they can ; but there still remains the question
how. The fallacy that besets them is of this kind ; and it is as
well that honest men should know it. " Sir Robert Peel, from
small beginnings, made (suppose) half a million by printed
cottons ; why then should not we make our own cottons, and
divide the half million among ourselves?" This looks specious ;
but the answer is not far off. Suppose this successful manu-
facturer made half a million of money, in thirty years, by sup-
plying on an average a million of customers ; how much was this
a-year from each ? Arithmetic says, fourpence. If, therefore,
the whole million customers were to form a Co-operative Society,
they might save or gain fourpence a-year apiece on the article
of printed cottons, provided they could make them as success-
fully as Sir Robert PeeL But what is the chance that they
shall make them as successfully, or that they shall not make
them by fourpence a-year worse ? The reason why the great
fortune was made by this particular manufacturer, was because
in some way or other he contrived to make better, or cheaper,
than all the world besides. But are the Co-operatives sure they
shall make better, or cheaper, than all the world besides ? Have
they more opportunities of studying the secrets of cotton-
printing, or of keeping them ; and are their agents to display
more skill and industry for their monthly pay, than anybody else
will for the sake of making a fortune ? The fact is the experi-

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy, 75

ment has been tried over and over, and it has universally been
found that the private trader outstrips the agent of the com-
pany, as much as if the latter had to run with his society
upon his back. It is portion of the old and well-established
principle of the division of labour. The Co-operatives are
not desired to admit the principle upon assertion ; but it
would be well that they should look into such evidence, as
goes to prove it to be true.

Such are the principal counter-inventions now afloat in France
and Enofland. They show an excitement on the subject of pro-
perty, which nothing? but the diffusion of sound knowledge can
turn to good. Let the rich men of the earth get the masses
that know something, on their side, — or the masses that know
nothing, will soon leave them nothing to do but to go to and
howl, as the scripture advises them. It is time, too, that the
friends of freedom in both countries should demonstrate to their
enemies, that though novelty of any kind will be acceptable
when good for anything, they do not depend upon novelty, but
are ready to show them Marengo with the present pattern
musquet, whenever the occasion shall arrive.

Since this was begun, the French government has committed
the unwisdom of persecuting the Saint-Simonians. Persecu-
tion is always a bungler's craft, that in trying to stop one hole
opens two. If they are made uncomfortable, let them come
to England. They shall be received as reverentially, as they
would be in Turkey.

Postscript to the Article on Saint-Simonianism, &c.

As the Number was on the point of publication, appeared
" An Address to the British Public, by the Saint- Siynonian
Missionaries.''* Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, pp. 36.

The Address makes an adroit use of the blunder of the juste
milieu in endeavouring to rectify the Saint-Simonian doctrine
by troops of horse and foot ; and is published at a low price for
dispersion. To such readers of this Review as feel interested
in the subject, it would be a desirable accompaniment, for
purposes of comparison.

Westminster Review. 1 April, 1832.

Art. VIII. — 1. The True Theory of Rent, in opposition to Mr, Ricardo
and others. Being An Exposition of Fallacies on Rent, Tithes^
By a Member of the University of Cambridge. — Second
Edition. London. Hatchard. 1826. 8vo. pp. 64.
2. Cours Cowplet d' Economic Politique Pratique. Par Jean-Baptiste
Say. Tome Quatrierae. — Paris. Rapilly. 1829. 8vo.

76 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy,

3. A Letter to Lord Howick, on a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor ;
Commutation of Tithes, and a Provision for the Irish Roman Catho-
lic Clergy. By Nassau William Senior, Esq. — Second Edition.
London. Murray. 1831. pp. 104.— Third Edition. With a Pre-
face. 1832.

^pHE above is a collection in order of date, of works bearing
on a subject which the intention of the British government
to interfere for improving the condition of the Irish clergy,"
meaning thereby a commutation of the Tithes, has made of
importance at the present moment.

The first question an intelligent spectator will demand to
have settled before he decides on supporting any active mea-
sures, is ** Out of whose pockets do the Tithes finally come ?"
or, to put it in a shape more germane to the actual circum-
stances, " If the claim to Tithes were at this moment abolished,
into whose pockets would the advantage go?" For though it
may be nakedly possible to frame a plan of commutation that
shall have the appearance of sinking the question by leaving
it in the same condition as before, it will be impossible to pre-
vent the individuals who are called on for decision, from being
swayed by their opinions on this particular point. He who
believes the consumers would have the benefit, will, if he be a
consistent person and above all if he be a land-owner, lean
towards throwing any onus that may chance to be in dispute,
on the consumers or on anybody except the owners of the
land ; while he who thinks the landlords would pocket the
result, will as necessarily defend the interests of the consumers.
And if the fact should be that a portion of advantage falls to
both, there will be an equal necessity for distinct information,
to all who desire not to determine in the dark.

It is great pity that political economists should ever be
swayed by human passions, or look to the interests of kin and
clan in the determination of their conclusions. They ought to
be angels ; but they are not. If, however, one school of econo-
mists has strenuously urged that Tithes were paid by the
consumers, when the visible tendency of the dogma was to
inflame popular discontent against the existing state of things, —
the opposite party, who though not a whit inferior in zeal for
popular interests always maintained that this was not the case,
have a fair right to come forward now, when the tables are
turned and the weight of popular interest is thrown on the
other side. If it is true that the landlords are the men to
whom the Tithes if abolished would revert, it would be a rueful
jest if by any accident the landed legislators were to evince a
zeal for an alteration in the system of Tithe, without a clear
recognition that the amount would fall into their own purses

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy, 77

in the form of rent ; and still worse, if they were to determine
that the people, the consumers, were the persons who should
pay.

It is pretty generally known, that what has been usually
spoken of under the title of the Theory of Rent,— or for greater
distinctness the Ricardo Theory, though there were several
other claimants to the paternity,— was founded on the principle,
that the difference in the quality of soils was the cause of Rent.
Not, that It was the cause of the differences in the magnitude
of rent, for this would never have been disputed ; but that it was
the cause of the existence of Rent at all, and that Rent would
not have existed if all the land in the world had been of one
unvarying quality, like the different beds in a citizen's kitchen-
garden. Its supporters did not always say this in terms as
distinct as these; for if they had, it. would have been scarcely
possible that their mistake should have gone unobserved either
by themselves or others. But they evinced by their Hne of
argument, that this was what they meant. They set up their
discovery of the difference of quality of soils, as something dis-
tinct from the cause of rent which had long before been assigned
by Adam Smith, namely that it was the consequence of the
limited quantity of the land. Which is evidence that they did
not mean simply that the different qualities were the cause of
the differences in the magnitude of rent, a thing as palpably
true on Smith's explanation as it could possibly be on theirs.

The publication cited in the Head under the title of the
*' True" or Adam Smith's "Theory of Rent," is the first that is
known to have been distinctly directed to pointing out the error
in the assignment of the cause, and tracing the steps by which
it was wrought up into the production of erroneous results.
The fault of the Ricardo Theory was shown to consist in mis-
taking an effect for a cause ; as is thus stated in the extracts,
where the text and the reply are given in juxta-position.

• Rent invariably pro- < The aboriginal fallacy of the [Ricardo]

ceeds from the employ- Theory of Rent. An additional quantity of

ment of an additional i i -n i i , i ^ • C

quantity of labour with a labour Will be employed because prices have

proportionally less re- risen, which at the same time raises rents ;

turn.'— Prmcip^^-s of Puli- ^nd not rents rise because more labour is era-

tical Economy and Ta.ra- ^if.„p^ '

tion. By David Ricardo, V^^y^^'
Esq. p. 58.

* The value of one man's produce is not

besJ'land'The^ sam°e"pro^- enhanced because the returns obtained by

duce would still be ob- another man in less favourable circum-

tained with the same stances are smaller than his own ; for the

labour as before, but its tendency of the latter imlividual's creating

value would be enhanced J . n • ^ j .1. ' %

in consequence of the di- new produce at all, IS to reduce the price of

78 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

minished returns obtain- produce, not increase it. But the price o'f
labour I^d f agricultural produce is first enhanced
Stock on the less fertile ^^'^^"^ an extrinsic cause, namely the increase
land.' — iJimrcZo. p. 61. of competition among the purchasers ; and
this enhancement makes it profitable for
the last man to produce, in spite of the partial reaction created by
the appearance of his new produce in the market.'

' Tokay does not rise in comparative value
either because more labour is employed in the
production of the last portion obtained, or
because a rent is paid to the landlord. It
rises in consequence of the increase of the
demand for it, compared with the quantity
that can be supplied ; and theii it becomes
profitable to employ a certain quantity of
additional labour in the production of a new portion of produce,
and the rent is raised at the same time.*

• The value of corn is * The value of corn is not regulated by this,
regulated by the quantity 13^^^ ^ regulate the quality of land,

of labour bestowed on Its , ° /• -x i u i '

production on that qua- and the portion ot capital, that can be

brought into action with a profit.'

' The inverted proposition as given opposite,
amounts to saying, that the price of corn is
regulated by the cost for which it can be pro-
duced on the last quality of land, or with the last portion of capital,
that can be brought into activity with a living proft at the going price.
Or in other words, that the price is regulated by the price j which is
reasoning in a circle.'

^ Among the properties here assigned as
the causes of no rent, the property of abun-
dance, or of unappropriated land not having
begun to be scarce, is the only effective one.
The rise in the price of agricultural produce,
at one and the same time raises rent, and
makes it practicable to cultivate land less
fertile or whose powers have decayed. But
there is no foundation for the inverted pro-
position, that it is only when the powers of
land decay, that there will be rent. It is
however quite true, that land possesses no
advantages over other sources of useful pro-
duce on account of its yielding a rent ; for
all that is given to one, is taken from another.
The overlooking this, appears to have been
the error of the Economisles.^

* The reason then, why
raw produce rises in com-
parative value, is be-
cause more labour is em-
ployed in the production
of the last portion ob-
tained, and not because
a rent is paid to the land-
lord.' — Ricardo. p. 62.

lity of land, or with that
portion of capital, which
pays no rent.' — Ricardo,
p. 62.

' Nothing is more com-
mon than to hear of the
advantages which the
land possesses over every
other source of useful
produce, on account of
the surplus whichityields
in the form of rent. Yet
when land is most abun-
dant, when most produc-
tive, and most fertile, it
yields no rent; and it is
only when its ])Owers
decay, and less is yielded
in return for labour, that
a share of the original
produce of the more fer-
tile portions is set apart
for rent.'— /?tcardo. p. 62.

* If air, water, the elas-
ticity of steam, and the
pressure of the atmos-
phere, were of various

* When air, water, &c. can be appropriated
and the supply is limited in proportion to the
demand, they are made the subject of rent ;

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy. 79

qualities J if they could without any reference to the existence of
be appropriated, and ea( h various qualities. A ffaoler who should take
quality existed only in , .. r« i c -u ^-u- /»

moderate abundance, bribes for the luxury of breathing a freer
they as well as the land atmosphere, would receive rent for air. And if
would afford a rent, as a walk on the roof sold for half-a-crown, while
t;SurhH„\rusi'lBr- P.""-^ tl^ehead out of window was only
do. p. 63. sixpence,— he would have been equally able

to obtain the half-crown, if his gaol had hap-
pened to have no windows at all. It is the
high price of fresh air altogether, that makes the window sell for six-
pence ; and not the window selling for sixpence that makes the roof
sell for half-a-crown.' — True Theory of Rent. Second Edition, jo. 20.

This is enough to show that as early as 1826, a resistance
was heojun to the Ricardo theory of rent, in the country where
it had been originated. There is in general little profit in ques-
tions of priority ; but in this case there is an accidental use. A
proposition upon Tithes was founded on bringing forward Adam
Smith's theory in contradiction to the other, and an examina-
tion of the English Corn Laws was moreover indirectly con-
nected with it ; and as the argument lay for a time under the
disadvantage of contradicting a theory which it was held a
kind of heresy to doubt, it has a right, when the tables are
turned, to enjoy any influence it may claim with the public on
the ground of having been original.

The answer made to the objections was, "that the difference
was only in the expression, and there was none in the prin-
ciple and, from another quarter, that it was only a petty
cavil." The answer in fact amounted to saying, that as long
as the load is carried, it makes no difference whether the horse
is held to move the cart, or the cart the horse ; — that, in short,
it is not worth quarrelling about, but is a cavil. Up to a certain
point this may be true. It may be of no importance, till the
consequences diverge. But it is possible to conceive a case
where the consequences should diverge, and awfully ; and
that would be, if the question should ever arise, whether the
way to increase the velocity of the progress, was to hook-on an
additional horse, or an additional cart. It is presumable nobody
would say it was a cavil then. In the same manner in the case
of the two theories of rent, the object is to see, not where the
consequences agree, but where they diverge. And it is remark-
able, that the results from the two assigned causes never dis-
tinctly diverge, till arriving at the subject of Tithes ; and then
Adam Smith's explanation demonstrates that Tithes are taken
out of the rents, while the followers of the Ricardo theory infer
that they are paid by the consumers in the increased price of
corn.

80 ImprovemeJit of Condition of the Clergy,

The followers of Ricardo prolonged and extended his mistake.
As in the instances noted in the next extracts.

« Cost of production, then, regulates the exchangeable value of
" commodities."

^ This is only true in one direction. The exchangeable value of a
commodity of ordinary consumption cannot long continue to be less
than will pay the cost of production including the necessary profits j
but it will be more^ to an extent limited only by the circumstances of
the particular case, whenever the competition increases the price faster
than the outlay increases the produce.'

' If there is any truth in the account that has been given of the
origin and progress of Rent, an immediate corollary from it is, that
taxes upon the land fall on the landlord. For if the land-owner united
the characters of landlord and cultivator by keeping the land in his
own hands, the charge must fall upon him ; and what he cannot keep
himself, he can never recover from others by the invention of selling
it to them with their eyes open.'

^ If it is urged that such land-owners might recover the tax from
the consumers, by raising the price of corn, — the answer is, that the
operation of their individual interests will prevent it. If they raise
the price of corn, it is manifest that less must be sold. A high price
spins out the consumption of a deficient harvest, and would cause only
a portion of the same magnitude to be consumed out of a plentiful one.
But none of the land-uwaers would place so much confidence in the
union among his brethren, as either to throw away corn already in
his barns, when he had the option of selling it, — or to refuse to grow
it, when by the sale of it he could obtain what he considers as a
reasonable profit. The quantity of corn grown and sold, therefore,
will not be diminished by any such combination ; and if the quantity
is not diminished, the price for which it is sold cannot be increased.
If there was no monopoly gain, the .case would be very different
indeed. For then the tax would oblige the land-owners to contract
their growth, till the price rose to what would pay them fur their
trouble; in the same manner as other producers do in similar circum-
stances. And the land-owners themselves will actually do this, with
respect to that portion of their produce which will not pay them the
necessary profits of stock.'

' If it is suggested that the landlord may raise the price by throwing
the necessity upon the tenants, it is not difficult to see that the tenants
will be equally unable to compass the end desired. To put the
strongest case, let it be supposed that all the landlords resolve not to
abate a fraction of rent on account of the tax, and that all the tenants
have been previously bound by long leases which leave them no alter-
native but that of recovering the tax from the consumers or losing
the amount. The tenant tlien, has made an improvident bargain by
which he is likely to lose the amount of the tax for several years,
unless it can be recovered from the consumers. But this will not pro-
duce in him any inclination to throw more away after it, either by
omitting to sell corn which is in his barns, or by omitting to grow it

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

to the utmost that will pay him a living profit upon the last sum
added to the outlay. The outlay and the produce will therefore be the
same as if the land-owners had held the land in their own hands; and
consequently, as before, the tax will not be recovered in the price.
The tenants therefore must put up with the loss, till they have the op-
portunity of recurring to the fair competition between landlords and
tenants, when the tax will be thrown upon the landlords ; for it is im-
possible that any resolutions of the landlords should induce the tenants
to go on acceptmg less than a living profit.'

' The way then to determine the effect of any tax or charge upon
land or agricultural produce, is to see what the effects would be upon
land-owners uniting the characters of landlord and cultivator, and
what alterations would be made in the bargain which they would have
to ofifer to the competition among tenants.* — True Theory of Rent.
Second Edition, p, 32.

Here follow minute calculations, on the principle last enun-
ciated, of the effects of Taxes on the Profits of manufacturers,
on Wages, on sources of income in general, and on " the pro-
duce of the Land." The last is what leads to the question of
Tithes, which it is the particular object to pursue. The state-
ment of the followers of the Ricardo theory is as next given.
" A tax upon the produce of land, a tax upon corn, for example,
would raise the price of corn, as of any other commodity. It would
fall by consequence, neither upon the farmer, nor upon the landlord,
" but upon the consumer. The farmer is situated as any other capitalist,
*f or producer ; and v/e have seen sufficiently in what manner the tax
upon commodities is transferred from him that produces to him that
consumes."

' The first fallacy is in the conclusion of the preceding Section
that all commodities are alike [that is, that there is no difference be-
tween those which are produced under a monopoly and those which
are not]. The next is in the inference, that a tax on corn will raise the
price because it is a commodity.^

' What follows is equally remote from being correct. The farmer
is not situated as any other capitalist or producer j for he precisely
differs from them in the capital point of having a monopoly gain at
his back from which he may recover. To say that he is situated as
any other capitalist or producer, is like saying that a man in a house
on fire is situated as a man in a ship ; — when the most notable fact
about the whole case is, that one has a back-door by which he may
escape, and the other has not.'

*'The landlord is equally exempted. We have already seen that
" there is a portion of the capital employed upon the land, the return

to which is sufficient to yield the ordinary profits of stock, and no

more. The price of produce must be sufficient to yield this profit,
" otherwise the capital would be withdrawn,^'

' The fallacy here is in the assumption that the tenants can raise
the price of corn, to gratify either themselves or the landlords, and
that capital cannot be withdrawn. The tenant must be indemnified
VOL. 11. F

82 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

for the tax ; but Eot out of the price of corn. A portion of capital
will be withdrawn [as detailed in the preceding calculations before
referred to] ; though it will be a comparatively small one. So far is
there from being any difficulty in capital being withdrawn, that it is
what happens on every diminution of demand. The idea of there
being any difficulty in its happening, may be referred to the opinion
before mentioned, of the existence of an unalterable demand.'

If a tax is imposed upon produce, and levied upon the cultivator,
it follows that the price of produce must rise sufficiently to refund the
tax. If the tax is 10 per cent or any other rate, upon the selling
price,corn must rise in value one tenth, or any other proportion.*'
^ It follows that something must be altered. But it no more follows
that it must be the price of produce, when it may also be the rent, —
than it follows that because a man's brother is dead it is Thomas,
when he had also a brother named John.'

^ The real effects on the landlords and tenants, of a tax on agricul-
tural produce, will, with the exception of a small reaction, be the
same as those of a reduction of price of equal amount. To recur, for
example, to the case stated before*, — If corn was at 445., and a tax
was imposed of As. per quarter, the first approximation to the result
would be, that the outlay would be reduced from 1010/. to 1000/., the
produce from 605 quarters to 600, the annual amount of profits from
101/. to 100/., and the rent from 220/. to 100/. For it would be the same
thing to the landholder both in his character of cultivator and land-
lord, whether a loss of As. per quarter was occasioned by a reduction
of price or by a tax. But the effect of the tax will not be to cause a
loss of precisely 4*. per quarter ; for there will be a certain reaction
on the price of corn in the way of increasing it, in consequence of the
diminution of produce which arises from the tax and is represented in
the particular case by five quarters. If on an estimate like those
formerly entered into, the amount of this reaction might be stated
at fourpence per quarter, the price of corn instead of 445. would be
44s. 4r/. And the effect of this would be in a small degree to increase
the outlay, the amount of profits, and the produce. But the principal
effect, neglecting inconsiderable fractions, would be that the price of
the 600 quarters would be increased by fourpence a quarter, or 10/.;
which will be added to the rent. The corrected rent therefore may be
stated at 110/. A further correction might be made by calculating
the effect of the small increase of produce last mentioned upon prices,
and similar corrections might be extended to an indefinite number ;
but their amount would be insignificant. The tax therefore, with the
exception of the reaction amounting to 10/., is taken from the
rent.'— /c/. p. 42.

" Tithes are a tax upon the produce of the land ; a tenth of the pro-
^' duce, perfectly or imperfectly collected."

* In which it was supposed, that the land-holder unites the character of
landlord and cultivator, and that the lowest price for which he and other culti-
vators are willing to advance capital and superintend its employment, is 10 per
cent per annum, [p. 13J.

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy, 83

^' The operation, therefore, of this tax, has been aheady ascertained.
It raises the price of produce, and falls wholly upon the consumer,'^

* That tithes are a tax upon the produce is clear. The consequence
therefore will be, that with the exception of a small reaction, they will
be taken from the rent ; with certain small alterations in outlay, pro-
fits, and produce, as before stated. The truth of this or of the oppo-
site representation, depends on the existence or non-existence of a
fallacy in the Section entitled ATax on the Produce of the Land." —
Id, p. 45.

It is plain that the locus of the error is in the assumption
that a certain quantity of corn must be grown, and conse-
quently if a tax be laid on the produce of the land, the price of
corn must be raised to cover the tax, as otherwise the quantity
required would not be ^rown ; — to the entire overlooking of the
fact, that in the case of all that is produced under a monopoly,
or in other words, under circumstances where the limitation of
the supply in proportion to the demand obliges the competitors
to give more than is sufficient to replace the expense of produc-
tion with the necessary profits, there is another source from
which the tax may be obtained without a rise of price, to wit
the rent, — and that the tax will be practically levied in this
quarter, without either the tenant or the landlord having the
power to prevent it by raising the price of corn. There will be
a small withdrawal of capital in consequence of the tax, and a
small increase in the price of corn in consequence of the small
diminution of produce which will ensue ; but with this trifling
deduction, the tax, or tithe, will in the long run be levied on
the rent.

The important point now left, is to endeavour, " nothing ex-
tenuating, nor setting down aught in malice," to calculate the
effects that would arise on the supposition of the immediate
declaration of the non-existence of Tithe ; always understand-
ing, as before, that it is done for the sake of the guide it presents
for the formation of just opinions on questions connected with
any kind of commutation.

* In opposition then to all these arguments, the conclusion is, that
Tithes fall on the landlords, but have a' so a certain effect in prevent-
ing the cultivation of poor soils, and diminishing the outlay upon
others.' [Which in return must cause a small reaction upon price,
but one far short of throwing the tax on the consume rs.]

^ In England the waste lands have been estimated at a seventh of
the whole. Hence if it may be assumed that the quality of this
seventh varies unifoimly, from that quality where the expenditure of
a given sum will return enough to pay the exp -nses with the neces-
sary profits and a ninth of all this besides for tithe, to that where it
would produce nothing, — the abolition uf tithes, in cal.ing into culti-
vation all the land down to that which would r-jturn the expen-
ses and profits without the tithe or furnish nine tenths of th«
F 2

84 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy,

former lowest produce, would call into cultivation one tenth of the
waste, and increase the quantity of cultivated land by one sixtieth.
And if three quarters of corn per acre is a fair average pro-
duce for the whole of the cultivated land in the country, and
one quarter per acre for the worst, — the produce of the new land
called into cultivation by the abolition of tithes would be a hundred-
and-eightieth part of what existed before*.'

' Again, the rents in England are supposed to be in the aggregate
a third of the produce. Hence the case so often assumed as an ex-
ample, — with corn at 55*., — is not very far from an average case.
And in it [as may be gathered from the terms of the last statement
in p. 14], the diminution of produce consequent on the reduced out-
lay [on the land already cultivated] arising from a tax of one tenth
or a tithe, would be [two quarters out of 609, or] less than the three-
hundredth partf. A dding therefore this effect to the other, the whole
diminution of produce effected by tithes in England, supposing them
to be universal, may be estimated at less than the hundred-and- twelfth
part.' — Id. Second Edition, p. 53.

What next follows is taken from a subsequent edition, and
does not appear in the Second, which has hitherto been quoted
for the purpose of establishing the date of its appearance.

^ If a third part of the land is tithe-free (as is understood to be the
case in England), one third must be deducted from the estimate of
the effect of tithes. And the effect of the abolition of the other two-
thirds would be, that the produce of the country would be increased
by two-thirds of a hundred-and-twelfth part, or ; which, if it
took place all at once, would cause the price of corn to fall by a quan-
tity which, on account of the comparative smallness of the increase,
would be at all events not very remote from the ratio of the increase,
or, if corn is supposed at 56*., fourpence a quarter. But this fall of
price — (being in fact the small reaction" mentioned under the heads
of Tithes" and ^* Taxes on the produce of the Land," and to which
in those places also the same observation may be applied) — will be
only temporary. And the reason of this is, the certainty that any given
I)ermanent alteration in the quantity of corn will ultimately produce
a corresponding alteration in the population that is to consume it,
and so bring back corn to the old price.'

^ On the landlords in the aggregate, the first effect would be, that
as fast as they could renew their agreements with the tenants, there
would come into their hands the value of the tithes as it stood before the
abolition, diminished by the total value of the increase of produce ; which
last (estimated at ^ of the whole produce, while the tithe abo-
lished is I of ^, or ) may be assumed to be (^i^ X 15) about
one eleventh of the value of the tithes. For as the [small] increase of
produce is attended with an effect upon prices, not materially diffe-
rent from causing the increased quantity to sell for the same value as
the old, — the full cost and value of this increase of produce, whatever
it may be, must in the first instance [or within a trivial difference]

* This is what has been in another place called the belt."
t This is what Dr. Chalmers (See Note at the end of the Article) p. 312, calls
the ''stratum."

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy,

be deducted from the rents that would otherwise have been obtained.
But as the price of corn recovers from the fourpenny fall that has been
inflicted on it, the landlords will gradually get possession, first of the
missing eleventh of the tithes, and then of an addition of rents on
account of the new land called into cultivation by the abolition. Aud
as the rents of different portions of this new land will be of all mag-
nitudes from a tenth of the produce down to nothing, half a tenth, or
a twentieth of the whole increase of produce, may be considered as a
fair estimate of the final increase of rents from this source. — If in-
stead of the tithes being abolished all at once, the removal took place
in different places one after another, results of the same import
would ultimately be produced, only by imperceptible gradations.'

' If it is true that a given permanent increase or diminution in the
quantity of corn will produce an effect upon population that will ulti-
mately bring back the old price, an immediate consequence is, that
the price of corn at this moment, is exactly the same as it would have
been at this moment if tithes had never existed. The effect of the
existing tithes, may be compared to the effect of a convulsion which
at some period of remote antiquity should have sunk the hundred-
and-sixty-eighth part of the land of the country into the sea. Britain
would at this moment be a less Britain than would otherwise have
been the case, by a hundred-and-sixty-eighth part of her territory,
population, and everything else. But it will not be contended that
there would at this moment be any increase in the price of corn, com-
pared with what would have been the price if there had been no such
convulsion at all,'

* The removal of tithes, therefore, would be a positive good, and
there is no reason why sensible men should omit any measure for ob-
taining it. But the existence of tithes, so far as is connected with
the price of corn, is not a positive evil ; and therefore sensible men
ought not to make an outcry as if it was. The real mischief of tithes
is reducible to their being a mode of collection peculiarly calculated
to generate ill will ; and therefore one which the church should be at
least as anxious to get rid of as anybody else. To which may be
added, that they produce the same political effect as if at some remote
period, an average hundred-and-sixty-eighth part of the territory
of the country had been buried in the sea ; and their removal by
commutation or otherwise, would produce the same effect as if
the like quantity of territory of average fertility were to rise out of
the water.'

^ The most extraordinary circumstance connected with Tithes is,
that the landlords and the clergy do not find out, that there is a
value approaching [in the end] to two-thirds of the hundred- and-
twelt'th part of the agricultural produce of the country, — (worth pro-
bably [at last] not less than 500,000/. per annum), — which might
be called into existence ; out of which something like half a tithe, or
25,000/. per annum, would accrue to the landlords in the shape of
rent on land that now pays none, and might be divided between the
landlords and the church, if they could only agree upon the terms.
For this would be the [final] effect of a commutation of any kind,

86 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

which should prevent the ecclesiastical revenue from beings raised, as
at present, by a tax on produce. Two reasons only can be given,
why something of this kind is not done. First, that the landlords
and the clergy are not generally aware of the fact ; Secondly, that
they have an indistinct dread of alteration. If the church could
could 2;et over the dread, the landlords might. It is for the church
therefore to consider, whether the contingent danjj^er of increasing
her revenues by the half of 25,000/. a year, balances the present evil
of being held out to the community as living on the price of bread.
Such a sum might not make much show, subdivided as it would be.
But it proves that there is enough, to pay for greasing the wheels ;
and that it would be for the interest of the landlords everywhere, to
allow the church to gain, and not lose, by the commutation. That
the community at large would [finally] be benefited to the amount
of 475,000/. per annum besides, ought also to be some reason ; though
the community at large are neither landlords nor clergymen*.' — True
Theory of Reni. Seventh Edition. 1830.

The inference from all this must be, that the clergy if they
are wise, will do all in their power to promote anything like a
commutation while they may. There is no use in saying that
the popular charges against Tithes have been over- rated. They
may have been over-rated in some directions ; but the truth is,
that the mode of operation of tithes is one which produces an
exasperation and a fretting evil, that are not measured by the
absolute magnitude of the cause. If part of a horse's harness
acts on him in such a manner as to keep up an excoriation and
irritate him to unmanageableness, it is of no use to demonstrate
to the quadruped that it is in reality but a fraction of the total
weight of the machine that presses on the sore. The question
is not one of mechanics, but of pain. It is true the horse has
been told, that the whole cart was pressing on his raw ; and
this is not the case. Lord King admits it ; and Lord King is a
waggoner that drives a long team. But it does not follow that
the clergy are a whit the safer, in insisting on riding on the
shafts as they are. There is not a man of secular knowledges
who ever felt his heart warmed towards ancient institutions
while he drank Floreat domus, that does not counsel them to

* • If a commutation of tithes were eflfected under legislative regulation, it
would be necessary to give the landlord a power of continuing the tithe in its
present form till the expiration of the existing lease, in cases where the land-
lord and tenant could not agree upon the sum to be added to the rent. For
without this, the landlord would be exposed to the loss of the amount of the
lithe during the unexpired period of the lease. At the same time it is presu-
mable, that such a provision would in very few cases cause any practical delay
in the execution of the desired commutation. For it would always be the
interest of the landlord to carry the commutation into effect, provided he could
make a fair agreement with the tenant; and it would be the interest of the
tenant to offer one. — Whenever there is a commutation of tithes, it is not likely
that the landlords will forget to secure themselves upon this point.*

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

^et off in time. Nobody asks them to give up a farthing now.
That contest is to come ; — and would they be the worse pre-
pared for it, for having had the wit to put themselves into the
situation of substantial land-proprietors, instead of hated in-
cumbents upon what will always be popularly viewed as the
land of other people ?

In 1829 M. Say took up the same ground on " Rent," and
may be considered as having decided a doubt which constituted
one of the few remaining op/?roZ>n a of political mathematics'*.

His conclusions are contained in the following Chapter, en-
titled On an opinion that has been advanced on the subject
of the profits of landed property."

^ In the First and Third parts of this work it has been endeavoured
to prove, that the exchangeable value of things rises in proportion to
the want there is for them in consequence of the actual condition of
the society concerned, without in ordinary cases exceeding the ex-
penses of production of each article of produce. It has been shown
how these expenses go to indemnify each of the persons concerned in
the production, for his share in the effect ; and to render these shares
more distinctly visible, I have described the operative as producing
by the application of his personal powers, the capitalist by the appli-
cation of his peculiar instrument which is his capital, and the landed
proprietor by the application of his, which is his right of property in
a piece of land. And on coming to the estimation of the portion of
the final results due to each of these several kinds of producers, it
has been made by taking the quantity of reccimpense which each of
them succeeds in making the others pay to him out the final result ; for
it seems very fair to conclude, that the value of the assistance which
he clubs, is measurable by the expense which other men voluntarily
go to, to procure it.'

^ Such is, on the subject of this Chapter, the doctrine professed in
the course of this work. It flows directly from that of Adam Smith,
and is the only one, as far as I can see, that leads to applicable and
practical results.'

' Some English writers, following in the steps of David Ricardo,
an author whose services and talents it would nevertheless be wrong
to overlook, have thought that Smith had not assigned the true causes
of rent; that he had not found the laws which determine its amount,
and did not know in what m.anner it is affected by the progress of so-
ciety. 1 shall dwell a little on their doctrine on this point ; but consi-
dering it as I do, as a mere abstract opinion which does not explain

* It is probably not hazarding much to say, that the only great opprobrium
now left, is the question of Absenteeism. On which the state of the controversy
is conceived to be, that the Quarterly Review (No. LXVI, Art. 8) demolished the
reasoning of the original proposer, by demonstrating the omission of a step ;
but this did not show the proposition to be false, but only to be unproved The
Westminster Review (for 1 Jan. 1829, Art. 15) endeavoured to re-establish the
defence on a new basis j and the question seems by general consent to lie over
for quieter times.

88 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

practical facts and consequently is of no use*, I shall confine myself to
tracing the principal arguments on which it is supported, and shaU
take them from the Notes which Mr. M'Culloch has added to the last
edition of Adam Smith, in which I apprehend they are presented in
their most compressed form.'

* Mr. M'CuUoch thinks that the inequality of the expense of produc-
tion attendant on the produce of different soils, is the principal cause,
and the measure^ of rent. He grounds his argument on the bad soil
costing more for cultivation than the good, and on the necessity there
is for cultivating the bad, to obtain the quantity of produce, as for in-
stance corn, which the society is in want of.'

' In the first place, it does not seem very easy to tell, how a diffe-
rence can be a real and effective cause. And in the next, who is there
that does not see, that the products of agriculture have in this respect
nothing that is not common to all other kinds of produce ; and that in
fact there is no product of human industry that, with relation to its
cost of production, is not in precisely the same situation ? The pro-
ducts of foreign commerce cost more, when they come from a greater
distance ; but is that the reason why more is gained upon those which
have not so far to go? If the producers who are next at hand are not
sufficient to supply the wants of the public, the price of the produce
in request rises, and so becomes sufficient to pay the expense of bring-
ing to market that which has to come from a greater distance. When
an individual manufacturer happens to have some particular advan-
tage, as for instance a favourable local situation, he gains more than
those who are obliged to go to greater expense to fit their goods for
market. Everything depends on the strength of the demand. It is
so plain that this is the cause which carries the price of wheat to what
it is, that Mr, M^Culloch himself says in express words, that the value
of corn has a tendency to rise with the increased BEmAND occasioned by
an increase of population. [Vol. iv. p. 105].'

' Is not this conceding, that the price which furnishes a rent to the
land- owner arises from the strength of the demand? Is it not agree-
ing with what is laid down in Adam Smith and the other parts of the
present work ? What new discovery is there in it at all ? Can it be
reasonably said, that the bad soils in a parish are the reason why the
good ones give a profit ? And is there any ground for announcing on
the strength of this, that a discovery has been made of the real reason
why land pays a rent, fee, or profit to the land-proprietor ?'

^ David Ricardo concedes in like manner, that it is the increase of
the population, or in other words of the sum total of the public wants,
which raises the price of corn to the height that makes it worth the
farmer's while to agree to pay a rent f . His conclusion from this is,
that Corn is not high because a rent is paid, but a rent is paid be-
cause corn is high." The case is the same with all products, of what-
ever kind. At the price to which the wants of the public raise a yard

* As observed, there appears to be an oversight. The consequences diverge,
on coming to the question where Tithe is taken from,
t Principles of Political Economy, ch. 2.

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy. 89

of cloth, this particular product has a value sufficient for indemni-
fying all concerned in the production. They are not paid from any
necessity there is for paying the expenses of the previous production ;
for these expenses would not of themselves give any value to the pro-
duct, if it had not an intrinsic use which caused it to be an object of
desire.'

No reduction," proceeds Ricardo, '* would take place in the price
of corn, although landlords should forego the whole of their rent."
There is no doubt of this being true ; because it is the strength of
the demand which is the primary cause of value, and the abandon-
ment of rents by the proprietors would have no effect upon the strength
of the demand.'

' Ricardo tries to prove, in opposition to Smith, that rent is not a
constituent part of the price of goods ; but what he says does not
prove it at all. If out of a quarter of corn at forty shillings, six shil-
lings go to the land-proprietor, the six shillings would still be included
in the price, even though the six shillings were paid to somebody
else in consequence of the land-proprietor's refusing to receive them.'

* Besides this, Adam Smith had said long before David Ricardo,
that " high or low rent is the effect of high or low price, and not the
cause, ''^ [Book i. ch. 11.]. It is true that he says at the same time,
that the case is different with the recompense of labour and stock ;
which he says are the cause of the price, and not the consequence.
My own opinion is, that in this last part. Smith himself is in the
wrong ; the wants of the public, exactly as in the case of corn, are
what are the cause of the price of products of whatever kind, and
what enable a speculator to pay the recompense of the labour and the
stock, and sometimes a share for the monopoly besides, when the
monopoly is an essential part of the production, as is the case with the
produce of the soil.'

* Mr. M^Culloch thinks that the principle on which he accounts for
rent, is different from that which gives rise to the advantages of a
monopoly; he admits that the owner of the land which produces To-
kay, has a monopoly; and he admits that his advantage is limited
only by the price to which the demand for Tokay makes the produce
rise. It is very hard to discover any difference between the monopoly
possessed by the' proprietor of a corn-field, and the proprietor of the
vineyard that produces Tokay, except that the last has much the
smallest number of competitors. Whenever the proprietor is in con-
dition to appropriate to himself the gain which arises from the em-
ployment of the land, he exercises a species of monopoly. When he
can get nothing from his property beyond the wages of his own labour
and the interest of his stock employed upon the land, his monopoly
gives him nothing, and it is the consumer that has the benefit of the
productive power of the soil.'

^ The same author, aware probably of the odd effect of putting
forward the bad soils as the cause of a profit being given by the good,
affects to treat the objection to it as " a petty cavil," and produces the
same idea again under a different formula. Out of the whole of the
capital employed in raising corn, there is one portion, he says, which

90 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

yields no rent to the proprietor of the land [Vol. iv. p, 113], and this
is what is the true foundation of the existence of rent. But this new
formula is liable to the same objection as the other. Is it possible,
that the absence of a profit in one case, can be a cause of profit in
another ?*

^ It is but justice to Mr. Malthus to say, that he has seen into the
weakness of this doctrine on rent, and has authenticated his opinion
in a reply to a question before parliament. On being asked whether the
bringing of new land into cultivation would not have the effect of
raising the rents of the old, he replied, " The cultivating of poor lands
is not the cause of the rise of rents ; the rise of the price of produce
compared with the costs of production, which is the cause of the rise
of rents, takes place first, and then such rise induces the cultivation
of the poorer land. That is the doctrine I originally stated, and I
believe it to be true; it was altered by others afterwards.*"

' What has been said appears enough to justify my opinion on the
so called theory of rent, which has introduced no new truth into the
science of political economy, and explains no fact that is not ex-
plained more naturally by the truths that had been previously estab-
lished. I shall not go into any further discussions on the subject,
that I may not run further risk of incurring the reproach made against
those which have hitherto taken place upon it, of being prodigiously
tiresome, and disgusting numbers with a study which is otherwise so
attractive by its application to, and influence on, the lot of human
kind. Who can calculate, for example, the immense consequences of
that one principle so clearly established since the time of Adam
Smith, and now adopted by all competent judges of the subject, that
every nation and every individual has a distinct interest in the pros-
perity of all the rest, and that jealousies are only the result of
ignorance ? or how much good is destined to arise out of the demon-
stration, that a fall in the value of produce is tantamount to a positive
augmentation of national wealth ?' — Say, Vol. iv. ch. 20.

Here is a great step gained, or more properly two great
steps ; First, that irresistible light is thrown on the nature of
monopoly produce ; Secondly, that there is shown to be nothing
in this kind of production that is confined to particular articles,
but all kinds of production are capable of taking place, and
actually do in various instances take place, under circumstances
of monopoly. It is two great New- Found-Lands, charted and
laid down.

It remains to produce the conclusions and inferences of the
Oxford Professor; who among the moderns, must be considered
as being, in point of success, at the head of what may be deno-
minated the readable school of Political Economy. After men-
tioning the proposition of Dr. Doyle, " that the tithing system
should be utterly and for ever abolished, and that a land-tax, not
exceeding one-tenth of the value [ ? of the annual produce] of the

• Third Report on Emigration from the United Kingdom, f). 321.

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy. 91

land, should be substituted for it, he makes the following
comment.

^ In one respect I perfectly agree with Dr. Doyle : I believe that the
tithing system not only ought to be, but will be utterly and for ever
abolished, and that not only in Ireland, but in England. It is true
that tithes are not a burthen on the wages of the labourer or the
profits of the farmer, but are a deduction, or rather an exception, from
the landlord's rent ; and that, except so far as inconvenience arises
from the mode in which they are collected, or from their interference
with the employment of capital (the latter of which inconveniences
affects consumers in general, the citizen as well as the rustic), neither
the labourer, the farmer, nor even the landlord, can justly complain
of them : neither the labourer nor the farmer, because he does not
really pay them, nor the landlord, because they are an interest in the
soil which never was his — which he may wish for, as he may wish for
his neighbour's field, but with no more right to appropriate.' — Letter
to Lord Howick. p. 55.

The evil of tithes is of the same nature as the evil of a bone
thrown between two dogs. It may be abstractedly said, that
the bone is a good, if the dogs would only agree to take one the
shank and the other the blade. But it is not in canine nature
to do so without snarling, if not a fight. In the same manner
it is not within the compass of cow- keeping humanity, to see
the tenth bowl-full taken out of the milk-pail, and swallow
down the sorrow by a reference to the abstruse truth, that each
regretted bowl was or ought to have been truly and virtually
present to the eyes of the tenant when he made his agreement
with his landlord. It is too much to throw down the bone, and
say it is not philosophy to quarrel. The friends of liberal prin-
ciples are too strong to gain a point by fraud, or yield one
through fear ; but too little weight has been here given to the
irritating circumstances connected with the levy of tithe.

* But though this is demonstrable, and demonstrable by a very
simple reasoning process, it does not seem possible to make it plain to
the uneducated classes : they cannot perceive that in their contests
with the parson, they are fighting only the landlord's battle — that
what is taken by the one is only so much withdrawn from the other^
and that if they were to succeed in the contest, and add, as must be
the ultimate result, tithe to rent, they would be only changing a land-
lord bound to residence and to the performance of specific duties, for
a landlord often an absentee^ and bound by law to the performance of
no duties whatever, and must themselves bear the cost of those reli-
gious duties which an endowed church performs without any expense
to individuals or to the state.'

' But this, as I said before, they cannot be made to understand.
Ignorance and selfishness in this country, and in Ireland either those
quaUties, or, according to Dr. Doyle, an innate love of justice, and
" an indomitable hatred of oppression, like a gem upon the front of

92 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy,

the nation that no darkness can obscure'* (121), have produced an
abhorrence of tithes unassailable by argument or explanation, which
has contributed as much as any other single cause to check Protes-
tantism and civilization in Ireland, and in England is rapidly alienat-
ing the people from their natural instructors, the parochial clergy,
and, by making a part of our institutions odious, has tended to destroy
their confidence in all the others.'

^ * If we wish to preserve, not merely the usefulness, but even the
existence of the Church of England as an establishment, this system
must be abandoned during the interval in which commutation remains
practicable.'

' The only question for a practical statesman is, for what provision
ought tithes to be commuted ?'

* It appears to me that there are only three provisions which could
be substituted for tithes

* 1. Payment by the state out of the public revenue.'

* 2. A tax on rent.'
' 3. Land.'

* The first may be summarily disposed of. It would be insecure,
it would make the clergy unpopular, and it would increase the public
burthens.' — Id. /?. 58.

The concluding words leave out the fact, that the tithes
would undoubtedly in some way or other be sold and placed in
the opposite scale. But the great objection to this mode of
provision plainly is, that while governments are such miserable
machines as they have hitherto proved themselves, so feeble in
the obtaining of any good to the community and so vigorous
whenever its interests are to be counteracted, — any increase to
the influence of governments is a crying evil which all men fit
to walk abroad without the care of the Lord Chancellor are
specially bound to resist.

' The second, a tax in money or corn on rent, would produce pre-
sent relief. In time, however, the landlords would feel only the
burthen, and would forget that the tithes had been surrendered to
them as an equivalent. And, even if they continued to pay the tax,
they would call out for corn-laws and restrictions as an indemnity, I
believe the endowment of the Church of England to be among the
most useful of our institutions ; I believe that we are indebted to it,
directly and indirectly, for benefits which long familiarity with them
prevents our appreciating^. But if my opinion were the reverse, if I
sympathized with the clamour against the Church which has been
raised — partly by ignorance, and partly, I fear, by evil intention — and
wished her to perish, as an endowed church, in our own times, I
should recommend tithes to be continued ; — if I wished her to perish
in our children's times, I should recommend them to be commuted
for a tax on rent.' — Jd.p. 58.

This is manifestly the language of a friend to the established,
or as somebody has maliciously termed it, the well-paid church ;
and ought to have weight accordingly.

Improvement of Condition of the Clergy. 93

* The only permanent provision for which tithes can be commuted
appears therefore to be land.'

* Objections have been raised to this mode of commutation, of
which some appear to me to be absolutely unfounded, and the others
to be capable of being altogether, or to a considerable extent, removed.'
"-Id, p. 58.

* It has been proposed to obviate these objections by a measure, a
sketch of which I had the honour of communicating to your Lord-
ship a few weeks ago.'

* Yon will probably recollect that the outline of that measure is,' —
' To form the different incumbents within a given district, say an

archdeaconry, or probably some smaller district, into a corporation.'

^ To vest in the corporation the revenues of all the different bene-
fices, to be by them divided between the different incumbents in pro-
portion to the value of the tithes of each respective benefice.'

* To appoint commissioners under whose superintendence the tithes
belonging to each benefice should be exchanged with the owners of
the soil for a portion of the lands out of which they issue, or sold to
them for money, to be laid out in the purchase of lands. To enable the
corporation to let such lands for not exceeding twenty-one years in
possession, without taking any fine, to exchange them for other lands,
or for money to be again laid out in the purchase of lands, and to give
a similar power of leasing the tithes while uncommuted ; and, lastly, to
require each corporation to set apart every year a definite portion of
its income, like the domus of a college, to be employed in permanent
improvements.'

' The immediate effect of such a measure, even before much com-
mutation had taken place, would be to allay much of the existing
irritation. The clergyman of a parish would not be paid by his
parishioners they would transact business with the bursar or steward
of the corporation. Compositions would be more permanent, and
conducted according to more uniform and better-known rules.
Where two or more of advowsons in the same district belong to one
proprietor, the revenues of the benefices might be equalized. The
tithes of ten or a dozen parishes would purchase a considerable estate,
affording a regular income, and defraying the expenses of manage-
ment and repairs ; and it would not be necessary that the estate
should be scattered throu j^h the parishes the tithes of which had been
commuted j it would not be necessary, though certainly expedient,
that it should be near any of them.' — Id. /?.64.

It will be time enough for fellows of colleges to stir, when Mr.
Rothschild's purse is taken turn and turn about by the Saint-
Simonians ; and it does not appear to require supernatural
genius in churchmen in general to discover, that there would be
a gain in point of security against any irregular popular action,
in putting themselves on a similar footing. The right of the
community acting through the organ of its government, to ap-
ply any portion of what are called the revenues of the church to
public purposes whenever those purposes are of more importance

94 Improvement of Condition of the Clergy,

than the services of the churchmen, will stand exactly where it
was before ; to wit, on the same ground as the right of reduction
of a regiment. In both cases, the thing must be done with a
decent attention to living interests ; but the abstract right of the
community to say that after a decent composition with living
interests it will no longer make and pay above six bishops, is as
clear as its right to say it will no longer have a colonel of the
135th Foot. Neither the bishop nor the colonel is to be turned
into the streets ; and the business-like way, if nothing particular
hinders, is to pay the man till he dies. But no indefeisible
bishoprics; or else, by all that is fair play, indefeisible colonelcies !
The colonels of regiments have a better title to demand the im-
mutabihty of their offices than the churchmen. Their revenues
were not taken by force from other people, that held them by the
gift of testators Vt^ho would have considered themselves as con-
demned to the lowest place of torment if they had voluntarily
left a chance of their coming to the present possessors. A
sacerdotal newspaper has said, the testators meant to give them
to the True Church, The Muggletonians shall hold them by
the same rule, when they can get them.

Two important points are to be settled with the Church, in
any commutation whatsoever. And those are, — First, that she
has no right to claim anything for the advantage that may
arise to the public out of the commutation, and will never arise
without. This would be allowing the establishment to make a
mai'ket of her own mischief, in a way which it may be hoped
she will be much too wise to think of bringing forward. Secondly,
that what she can fairly charge for, is what she actually can get ;
with an exception in favour of such portions of revenue as she
may be deprived of by physical resistance, deduction however
made of what would be the probable expenses of recovery. A
church that came into possession of a hated, resisted claim,
has not a right to charge for it, except in some of the extremest
cases, as if it was an amiable and uncontested one.

In conclusion, opportunity is taken to reject and disavow the
principle, which would continue the existence of a portion of
removeable evil, on the pretence of at some future period
effecting the destruction of a greater. This may suit the policy
of feebleness ; but the Radicals have a clear view of the series
of initial depression, medial struggle, and final victory with the
whole field to themselves, which the dilatory tactics of the leaders
with whom they are for the present connected, appear to pro-
mise them.

The Preface to the Third Edition of the work of the Oxford
Professor, is remarkable for the almost literal corroboration
given in its two concluding paragraphs, to the assertion that

Silk and Glove Trades,

the effect of tithes is to make " Britain be a less Britain," and
to the similar assertion on the effect of absenteeism, contained
in the Article of this Review already cited in a Note*.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1832.

AuT. X. — 1. Report of a Speech of the Right Honourable C. Poulett
Thomson on the Silk Trade, Morning Chronicle, March 2, 1832.

2. Id. on Fina?2ce. Morning Chronicle, Feb. 7, 1832.

TT was observed with surprise, in a conversation with some
individuals of eminence as political economists and general
reasoners, that they did not appear convinced of what may be
denominated the double incidence of the extra price got up by
means of duties and prohibitions. There may have been mis-
apprehension on some side ; for the fugacia verba are vastly
inferior instruments to the litera scripta, for carrying on an
examination where everything depends on precision of statement
and accuracy of mutual understanding. There may easily have
been some mistake ; but what is meant by the double incidence
is this, — that what is given to one man in the shape of artificial
extra price, is taken twice over from somebody else. Now
either this is true or it is not. If it is not, the Westminster
Review, which prides itself above all things in not belonging to
the school of political economy which makes a point of never
avowing an amendment or an error, will declare itself to have
been wrong the moment it shall be proved upon it. If it is true,
it is a matter of great importance both at the present moment
and at all future moments ; and as all questions are determina-
ble with pains, it is great pity that anybody should be left in
doubt. This is not written in bravado; but with a full and
experimental consciousness of the deceitfulness of preconceived
opinion, and the great advantage of a fresh eye in detecting
fallacy. Only, as before, let the seat of the fallacy be shown.

What has been maintained f and is still maintained, is, that
when a glove-maker, or a silk-weaver, obliges the consumer to
give three shillings for the article which could be procured else-
where for two, there is not a simple, or a single, loss of the
shilling which he gains ; but that it is lost twice over. Not
that it is lost twice over upon the total average, for that would

* To the authorities quoted in aid, may be a'lded that of Dr. Chalmers ;
whose book On Political Economy, in Connexion with the Moral State and
Moral Prospects of Society," obtained since this Article was begun, is of too much
importance to be passed over with an accidental notice. — See " Chap. X. On
Tithes."

t Article on ' Free Trade' (in the Westminster Review for January 1830.
Art, 70- Republished as a pamphlet.

Silk and Glove Trades.

be overlooking that the gainer gains it once ; — but that the gain
of the glove or silk trade from the shiUing falls in the shape of
equal loss on some other trades, which makes incidence No. One
and creates a balance, and that the loss falls over again on the
consumer besides, which makes incidence No. Two.

Recurring to the case set out with, there seems no dispute
that with respect to the two shillings, the gain of the forcible
glove-seller is balanced by the loss of the Birmingham trader
(for example) who would have procured gloves from France
by the exchange of his wares. This part therefore may be dis-
missed, and the question confined to the one. And here agaia
there seems to be no dispute, that if the wearer is made to ex-
pend a shilling more on gloves, he must expend a shilling less
on something else. That the man must economize in something,
will be manifest to everybody ; for he cannot both spend his
third shilling on gloves and on something else ; and he u ill
spend it on something else if he is not forced to spend it on tbe
gloves, unless it can be proved that he will lock it up for ever,
or throw it into the river.

If an Act of Parliament were to direct that all men should
wear linen coats instead of woollen, the woollen-drapers would
present themselves in crowds to parliament to state, that it was
quite impossible any national gain should arise from this; —
that though it was clearly a good thing for the trade in linens,
it was equally a bad one for the trade in svoollens ; — that
though the consumer might not complain, inasmuch as he got
linen coats for his money instead of woollen ones, yet they the
woollen-drapers had a right to complain, to the fullest extent
that men can do, who see their property and profits taken from
them to be given to another without any plea of public advan-
tage or necessity. They would say, that though there might be
no loss to the public in the aggregate, the gains of the linen-
drapers were balanced by an incidence on them, and this inci-
dence they maintained to be an intolerable evil and injustice.

Now in all this, as already intimated, there would be no
actual loss to the consumer, except in the matter of fancy ; for
he gets linen coats for his money instead of woollen ones. But
put the case that the trade of woollen-drapers is diminished, by
a shilling or by a million shillings, not for the purpose of buying
linen from a trader in linens, but for the purpose of being
forcibly applied to the use of the trader who sells dear gloves
or silks by Act of Parliament. The woollen-draper is in no
wise comforted by the change ; on him there is the single inci-
dence as before. But there is a new feature in the case, —
which is, that the payer of the money gets no linen coats. He
simply pays three shilHngs instead of two, and gets nothing for

Silk and Glove Trades,

the difference. On hira, therefore, the world witnesses a second
incidence, which makes the double ; the whole being resolvable
into the fact, that in this case there is a voluntary destruction
or throwing away of money and labour by Act of Parliament,
and in the other there is not. And the results will be of pre-
cisely the same nature, if, instead of the woollen-draper, the
losing trader should be the pastry-cook or the tobacconist.

If a highwayman takes a shilling from a true man on the
road, the gain of the highwayman is balanced by a single inci-
dence upon the true man ; and in the ulterior consequences,
there is either no difference, or a mere transfer of place which
makes no difference in the aggregate. If the two individuals
would spend the shilling at the same shop, then there is no dif-
ference in the ulterior consequences. If one spends it in brandy-
and-water and the other would have bought religious tracts, then
the increase of custom to one of these trades is balanced by
the loss of custom to the other. And as the enjoyment to the
robber balances the privation of the sufferer, there is a final
balance on the whole, as in the case of the woollen-drapers.

And here then appears to come the strength of the adversary's
case ; — involving the oversight which is very likely to have been
at the bottom of the dispute. Suppose the dealer in gloves,
instead of taking a shiUing by Act of Parliament, had taken
it on the highway. Could there have been a single incidence
in this last case, and a double one in the other? Or could it
have made any difference in the aggregate of consequences,
whether the shilling was stolen by the glove-merchant to be
applied to the benefit of his trade, or by him or somebody else
to be expended in brandy-and-water ? This looks like dipose?' ;
but is not. The answer is. Yes. The fallacy is a very subtile
one; but there is a fallacy. And it consists in confounding
the cases where the glove-merchant should rob to expend on
brandy-and-water, and to apply to the benefit of his trade. He
may do which he pleases ; but he cannot do both. If he does
the first, he stands simply in the shoes of the highwayman ;
and his being a glove-merchant on other days, is an inoperative
accident. If he does the second, the benefit to his trade balances
the loss of the brandy-and-water to himself ; but there is anew
incidence in the shape of loss of trade to the tavern-keeper,
which makes incidence No, Two,

Theft, then, is an evil of single incidence ; money taken on
pretence of protection to trade, is of double. If every individual
in the community were to practise simple theft in turn, it might
be so arranged that not only in the aggregate but in the case of
each individual there should be a balance. If every individual
could have a trade with a protection to it, it might be so ar-

VOL. II. G

Silk and Glove Trades,

rani^ed that his apparent gains from his extra price should be
balanced by what he paid in extra prices to other people ; but
the sum total of the apparent gains from protection, would be
lost among the public besides, through the insanity of every-
body chusmg to have the dearer article,--and might by possi-
bility be so divided as to fall on every man to an amount equal
to his apparent gains. Where is the error in this ? Let it be
a contest d r amiable to demonstrate its locality. But if it is not
demonstrated, then let there be an acknowledgment of the
double incidence.

Now then, to the moral. If the glove-makers and silk-weavers
come before parliament in forma pauperumy and prove to the-
satisfaction of the guardians of the public purse that it is neces-
sary the community should disburse thirty thousand pounds on
them in the way of charity, let thirty thousand pounds be given
them at once out of the community's pockets, and let there be
an end. But do not have the perverse ingenuity, to put the
thirty thousand pounds into their pockets by a process, which
shall first take it out of the pockets of some other traders of their
countrymen, and thenmake the loss forty thousandths adding
the gratuitous loss of ten thousand to the consumers besides.
Let us be charitable, let us be profuse, let us allow anybody to
take our money that will ; but let us endeavour to insist upon
it, that they shall give away our money simpliciter and not
throw away a quarter by the way, and that when they see fit
to make a present of thirty thousand pounds, they shall not
make our loss forty, by the awkwardness of their process. Or
if v*^e cannot hinder it, let us at all events give it to be under-
stood, we know that they are taking forty thousand pounds,
and that it is their pleasure to waste ten thousand by the way,
for the sake of the mystification that may be thrown about the
other thirty by the contrivance.

It is very true that it is difficult to collect and embody the
tradesmen from whom all the extra shillings paid by law for
the gloves must necessarily be taken ; and this is the strong hold
in which the common enemy puts his trust. But the system of
everybody raising money upon everybody, is not the less absurd
because the everybody happens to be considerably dispersed.
The tradesmen who are to take, are all ready to bawl upon a
signal ; and the tradesmen who are to lose, are divided over
unknown spaces, and there is no getting any two of them to
whisper in concert. But it does not the less follow that the
plan is one of perfect idiocy, except so far as it is wise on the
part of those who think they can plunder by means of it, and
could not plunder without. At what sera, in what portion of
the period intervening between the present and the arrival of the

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

final comet, will this verity have made its appearance in the
House of Commons ?

An immense joke was raised there lately against the Right
Hon. gentleman the Reports of whose Speeches are cited, which
displays with great naivete the nature of the first principles of
Toryism. On occasion of the produce of a tax falling short, it
occurred to the Right Hon. gentleman to observe, that at all
events the difference was fructifying in the pockets of the people.
And upon this the Tories hustled him. With all deference,
their mistake was simply in the assumption, that the relation
between a government and people, is that of plunderer and
victim. If a pickpocket should be heard saying, '* I missed that
guinea, but at all events it is fructifying in the gentleman's
pocket — the Tory joke would hold good against him. If a
creditable man was heard to say, " I meant to have spent my
children's guinea in taking them to the opera ; but at all events
they have it for another time ;" — the world would estimate the
constitutional obliquity and unconscious ignorance of equitable
distinctions, which could lead any person to confound this case
with the other. Why will the Right Hon. gentleman never
answer his financial enemies with the double incidence f

(Four Supplements to this Article in followiDg numbers.)

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1832.

Art. XI. — Instructions to my Daughter, fur playing on the Enhar-
monic Guitar. Being an attempt to effect the execution of correct
ha7'mony, on principles analogous to those of the ancient Enharmonic,
By a Member of the University of Cambridge*. — London. Gould-
ing and D'Almaine, 20 Soho Square. 1829. 4to. pp. 30. With
Plates.

^""HIS is a piece of musical radicalism ; and like other pieces
of radicahsm, it will succeed in the end if it is right ;— the
principle of radicalism everywhere, being that reason has been
given for man's use, and it is reasonable he should use it. The
object in the present instance is to prove, that in the same
manner as science can determine the form of a lens that is
most effective in aiding the eye, and can do this with vastly
more precision, certainty, and completeness, than could be
arrived at by any number of experimental rubbings and explo-
ratory grindings, and referring the results to the judgment of

* The name of the author of the present Volumes, was affixed to the Pre-
face. Under these circumstances no scruple has been felt in making the same
alterations both in the text and in the commentary, that would have been made
in a new edition of either.

100

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

the eye,— so it can determine the sounds which make the basis
of the effect upon the ear called music, with vastly more pre-
cision and facility, than can be attained by any possible number
of vague experiments, and referring the results to the judg-
ment of the ear. And in connexion with this it is attempted
to be established, that the Enharmonic of the ancients, from
the accounts of it that remain, was an effort — though, from
an error in the early stages, an eminently unsuccessful one —
to apply the scale of perfect sounds which should be thus
determined, to any sound on which it should be desired to
begin anew, or in other words to changes of key; and finally, that
what the ancients failed in, the moderns ought to accomplish.

The fallacy by which the musical Tories in all ages, — the
enemies of " theory," which means reasoning, and the admirers
of " practical" conclusions, which mean blundering on by the
rule of thumb, — have resisted the introduction of science into
this department of the arts, is a statement like the following.
** If science asserts anything to be harmonious which the ear
disapproves, then science is wrong. If it asserts nothing but
what can also be discovered by the ear, where is the use of
science?" The weakness of this, consists in keeping back all
that science may add of precision and facility ; and is best ex-
posed by a reference to the sister case of Optics. " If Mr.
Dollond's application of the theory of spherical or parabolic sur-
faces produces a bad pair of spectacles, Mr. Dollond is in the
wrong. If it produces nothing but what might have been
arrived at by grinding a piece of glass into forms a little more
convex or concave and noting the effect of the alterations on
the eye, where is the good of Mr. Dollond ?" Everybody per-
ceives that the fallacy in this, is in keeping back the simplicity,
the accuracy, and the ultimate applicability to practical use,
of the theory employed by Mr. Dollond ; and in endeavour-
ing to substitute for it a tentative process, which even if it
be allowed that in some individual cases the results should
be of equal perfectness- and value, is vastly inferior to the other
in the aggregate of consequences. It may be conceded, in
both cases, that if science determines anything which the
sense disapproves, science is in the wrong ; but what it is in-
tended to maintain and defend is, that in both cases, science
not only does nothing of this, kind, but that it is capable of
going down at once upon the truth, with a directness and effect
which tentative processes without the aid of first principles will
vainly hobble after in pursuit.

The dispute upon this point as relates to music, is at least at
old as the contest between Aristoxenus and the Pythagoreans,
which dates as early as 300 years before the Christian sera. But

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

101

it would be unfair to rank Aristoxenus among the irrational
opponents of scientific inquiry ; for there existed in his case the
striking and not very frequent fact, that the scientific men were
wrong. The opposition of Aristoxenus was therefore in reality
nothing but a good ear declaring itself against 2i faulty theore-
tical division. The musical mathematicians of antiquity took
as many as three consecutive steps into the truth ; but their
next was a marvellous blunder, — a pitiable missing of the right
though it lay before them, and plunging into the wrong, —
which marred the whole of their results, and caused all ancient
music to flounder in a massof unharmony. If mathematicians
would lead the world, the first essential is that they should be
right. If they are not, they must not be surprised if the sup-
porters of the rule of thumb take the opportunity to get before
them.

The question on "which the whole issue may be said to rest,
is whether any reason can be assigned, why one set of sounds
make music by their composition or succession and another set
do not, — or whether this is a mystery to be found only in
fiddlers' ears, and of which no ulterior explanation can be given.
To which, if it be conceded that any reason can be given at all,
may be added the further question, whether the principles that
explain the phsenomena to any extent or in any degree, are not
capable of being extended so as to afford a plenary elucidation
of the whole.

The histories of all nations refer to very early periods the dis-
covery, that certain successions or combinations of sounds have
the effect upon the ear which is implied by music ; and it may
be assumed that in all countries a considerable degree of prac-
tical acquaintance has been acquired with the sounds, before
any person has thought of investigating the cause. The story
of Pythagoras's listening to blacksmiths' hammers, and dis-
covering that the different sounds had some relation to the
weights, has been sufficient to secure to that philosopher the
renown of being the first who sought for the explanation of
musical relations in the properties of matter. The account
given by Nicomachus is, that Pythagoras ** heard some iron
hammers striking on an anvil, and giving out sounds that made
most harmonious combinations with one another, all except one
pair* which led him to inquire what were the peculiarities of
the hammers which produced these different effects. Whether

* \<7ry]}covffi pociffT^^m ffi^yj^cov I'tt' a,7t(jLovi pociovrcov, zxt rob; '^cc^ocfju^
Tpof r/,XXyiXov$ ffvf^(pcovo7dirou; k-TTohihovrwv^ ^Xyiv f/,ioci (Tu^vytocg. — Nicoma-
chi Harmonices Manualis, p. 10. In the Antiquae Musicae auctores septem of
Marcus Meibomius. Amstelod. 1652. Mus.Brit.

102

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

this is an exact account or not, some observation of this kind
appears to have speedily led to the discovery, that of strings of the
same thickness and composition, and stretched by the same
weight, those gave the same musical sound (or were what is called
in unison) which were of equal lengths ; — that if of two strings in
unison as above, one was shortened by a half, it produced a
sound which, though very far from being in unison with the
sound of the other, might be heard contemporaneously with it
with a strong sensation of satisfaction and consciousness of
agreement, and that the two sounds in fact bore that particular
relation to each other, by which two voices of very different
kinds, as for instance those of a man and a child, can sing the
same tune or air as really as if they sang in unison, being what
musicians have since distinguished by the title of Octaves ; —
that if instead of a half the string was shortened by a third
part, there was produced a note which, heard either in combi-
nation with or succession to the first, created one of those
marked effects which all who had attained to any degree of
musical execution by the guidance of the ear, had treasured up
as one of the most efficient weapons in the armoury of sweet
sounds, being what modern musicians name the Fifth ; — and
that if instead of a third part it was shortened by a fourth, there
was produced another note, very distinct from the last, but
which, like it, was immediately recognizable as one of the rela-
tions which experimental musicians had agreed in placing
among their sources of dehght, being the same which in modern
times is called the Fourth,

So far Pythagoras and his followers appear to have run well ;
but afterwards Typhon hindered. Instead of pursuing the clue
of which they already had hold, and examining the effects of
shortening the original string by a fifth part and by a sixth,
they strayed into shortening the results of previous experi-
ments by a third, and lengthening them by an eighth, being
manifestly induced by the prospect of obtaining intervals like
that which they had found existing between the Fifth and
Fourth, being the same to which modern nomenclature, in refer-
ence to other intervals not yet mentioned, has given the title
of the Great or Greater Tone, And here was the beginning
of sorrows. Had Apollo and the Muses Nine but led them to
try the effects of shortening the original string by the fifth part
and by the sixth, they would have discovered the pleasing
relations of sound which modern musicians have denominated
the Major and the Minor Third, and their way would have been
open to " demonstrate " (to borrow an expression from the ana-
tomists,) 1st, the existence of what has been since called the
^mall or Smaller Tone, as being less than the other before

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

103

mentioned by the difference named a Comma, and which they
would have found existing between the Minor Third and the
Fourth ; 2ndly, the true measure of the interval between the Ma-
jor and the Minor Third, w^hich is in fact the interval between a
note and its Sharp or Flat in the same key ; 3dly, the ease with
which the interval between the Fifth and the Octave is divisible
into intervals equal to the others and lying in the same order from
the great central interval outwards, by shortening the string by
the comparatively simple fractions of three-eighths and two-
fifths, thus arriving at the discovery of those other pleasing
relations which the moderns have named the Minor and the
Major Sixth; 4thly, the wonderful congruity, dependent on
the properties of numbers, by which each of the sounds thus
determined as making harmonious intervals with the Key-note
or sound of the original string, makes harmonious, intervals of
some of the same kinds, with all the others, with the exception
only of the cases where the interval is smaller than any of those
which have been distinguished as harmonious ; and 5thly, they
would have been in a condition to investigate the means of
dividing the vacant spaces at the two ends of the octave*, in
such manner as should continue to form harmonious intervals
with the sounds already established as making harmonious in-
tervals with the Key-note, thus leading to the determination of
a Minor and a Major Seventh, and by analogy a Major and a
Minor Second, But Apollo and the Muses left them to them-
selves ; and the consequence was, they stumbled and they fell.
The " Canon" of Euclid — the Euclid of geometry t, unless a por-
tion of uncertainty which attaches to the authorship permit him
to escape — is evidence of the feebleness of man when he is pre-
destined to do wrong. The attempt at the division of the

* When the word octave is begun with a small instead of a capital letter, it
implies the space intercepted between the lengths of string that give the Key-
note and the sound called the Octave. The space intercepted between the
lengths that make the Octave and the Double Octave, the Double Octave and
^he Treble, &c. is called the second, third octave, &c. And any intermediate
lengths, or the sounds produced by them, are said to lie in the first, second,
third octave, &c. as the case may be.

t A description of the " Section of the Canon*' attributed to Euclid, will be
interesting for the sake of comparison.

The whole or original string on which the experiment of division is to be
made, the ancients called ^^o(rXoif/,[ocx,vofAivo;, proslamhanomenos ; which may be
translated, the string " taken to betjin with." And they always suppose the
head of the string, or the end at which portions are to be cut off or added by
stopping the string in different places, to be uppermost, as in an instrument held
in the manner of the guitar. The consequence of which is, that a deep note, as
being stopped higher up, they call an upper note; and a shrill one, as being
stopped lower down, they call a lower; being directly the contrary of the mo-
dern nomenclature.

The author of the " Section of the Canon" begins by dividing his original
string into four equal parts.

He takes three of these (counting from the bridge towards the head), and

104

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

Canon, — in other words, at the division of a string into the lengths
which produce the sounds that make music in a single key, — was

produces the v'^ra.rcov hdrovof, hypaton diatonos ; being what the moderns call
the Fourth.

He takes two, and produces the f^io-'/j, mese, or Octave.

He takes one, and produces the vnr'i^ v'^i^f^oXociMV, nete hyperholceon, being
the Double Octave.

He then divides the string that produces the Fourth in half, and gets the
yyiT'/i ffuvnf^l^^vuVf nete synemmenon, being the Fourth in the second octave.

He divides the half of the original string into three equal parts, and cuts off
one ; thereby producing the v^r'/j "hn^ivyy^ivuv, nete diezeugmenon, or what the
moderns would call the Fifth in the second octave.

He doubles the nete diezeugmenon, and produces the vTeccrn f/^Krcov, hypate
mesun; being what the moderns call the Fifth.

He cuts off a third part from the hypate mesun, and produces what he calls the
'Toc^oifAff-y}, param^se ; being in modern language a Great Tone above the
Octave.

He doubles the paramese, and produces what he calls the vTrarn vTrccruv,
hypate hypaton, being in modern language a Great Tone above the Key-note.
Called elsewhere v^rdrn (hot^ziex,, hypate hareia.

These sounds he calls la-rcora, " standing," and (p^oyyoi tov a,fAzra>P>oXov
irvffryif/.ccrog, "sounds of the system that never changes."

He next divides the string that makes the Double Octave into eight equal
parts, and adds one ; making thereby what he calls the 'Ptot^ccr/iTn v-rs^QoXcciuv
^tarovo;^ paranete ihyperholcem diatonos, being in modern language a Great
Tone below the Double Octave, or the sound which is a comma fiatter than
what is ordinarily taken for the Minor Seventh, in the second octave.

He then divides X\i& paranete hyperholceon diatonos also into eight equal parts,
^nd adds one ; making thereby what he calls the r^iryi v'^z^floXccluv, trite hyper-
holcBon, being in modern language a Great Tone lower than the last, or a Minor
Sixth too fiat by a comma, in the second octave.

He next divides the trite hyperholceon into three equal parts, and adds one j
making thereby what he calls the rpiryi ^nZ,ivy/u,iv.'/fv, trite diezeugmenon,
being in modern language a Minor Third too fiat by a comma, in the second
octave.

He next divides the trite diezeugmenon into two equal parts, and adds one j
making thereby what he calls the ^ra^yrar?? f/,i(rMV} parhypnte meson, being in
modern language a Minor Sixth too flat by a comma, and in fact an Octave below
the trite hyperholceon.

He next adds to the string that makes the parhypate meson, a length equal to
the difference between it and the string that makes the trite diezeugmenon; ob-
taining thereby what he calls the cra^fcr^r?? v9ra.rMV. parhypate hypaton, being
in modern language a Minor Third too flat by a comma, and in fact an Octave
below the trite diezeugmenon.

Lastly he takes three-fourths of the string that makes the hypaton diatonos or
Fourth ; obtaining thereby what he calls the fJ'^i<Tojv "hidrovo?, meson diato7ios, being
in modern language a Great Tone below the Octave, or a comma flatter than
what is ordinarily'taken for the Minor Seventh, and in fact an Octave below the
paranete hyperholceon diatonos. And the six last-mentioned sounds he calls
(pi^ofMvot, " shifting," and Jctvov^ivoi, '« moveable." The meaning of these
terms, and of the opposite ones, being stated to be, that the sounds called
"standing" or '* unchanging" are found without alteration in the different
genera, (^an assumption, by the way, which is not borne out by the scales pre-
sented by Ptolemy), while the sounds which occupy the places of those named
" moveable," are not always in the proportions here given, but are found to be
different in the different genera.— tSee Euclid's Section of the Canon,'' p. 2^1,
Meibomius.

In the plate attached in the edition of Meibomius there is represented another

Enharmonic of the Ancients^

105

a failure ; and, by necessity, everything of a more complex
nature which was built upon it was a failure also. The ancients

note between the Octave and the paramese, under the title of t^/t?? o'uvyi/u.fiivuv,
trite synemmenon. But it is not mentioned in the '* Section of the Canons"
though its name, along- with many otliers in similar circumstances* appears in
the lists contained in the *' Introduction to Harmony" prefixed. In a table of
ratios added by Meibomius the editor, its length is given as being to that which
makes the Octave, as 4374 to 4608 j and from the name in the plate being in a
different type and preceded by an asterisk, there appears to be an intended
reference to something which has not been discovered. If the ratio is to be
considered as of good authority, the sound is that which would be obtained by
dividing the string that makes the frife A?/;)er6o/c5on into two equal parts, and
adding one. Such a sound would in modern language be a Minor Second too flat
by a comma, in the second octave. The principal use of observing this sound,
is that it offers assistance in settling the meaning of the term synemmenun, as
will be hereafter seen.

If the different lengths of string assigned as above are stopped in succession
as might be done on a guitar, beginning with the longest and omitting the pros-
lambanomenos or open string, they will stand as follows.

Eypate hypaton, the " uppermost of the uppermost set." Called else-
where Hypatebareia, literally the *' deep uppermost."

Parhypate hypatun, the " deepest-but-one of the uppermost set."

Hypaton diatonos, the " diatoyiic of the uppermost set." Called the diatonic,
(as may be collected from comparison of all the instances where the
terra appears), from the circumstance of its being distant by a Great
Tone from the sound next to it on each side.

Hypate meson, the " uppermost of the middle set."

Parhypate meson, the " uppermost-but-one of the middle set."

Meson diatonos, the '* diatonic of the middle set."

Mese, the *' middle" of the string ; i. e. the Octave.

On the other side of the Octave, are

Paramese, the " next to the Octave.'*

Trite diezeugmenon, the " third of the set that is made by adding a third

part." As will be treated of hereafter.
Nete synemmenon, the " lowest of the set that is made by adding half.'*

As will be treated of hereafter.
Nete diezeugmenon, the " lowest of the set that is made by adding a third

part."

Trite hyperholceon, the *' third of the ultra or extreme set."
Paranete hyperholccon diatonos^ the " diatonic that is lowest-but-one of the
extreme set."

Nete hyperholccon, the ''lowest of the extreme set;" being the Double
Octave.

The seven last sounds are respectively the Octaves to the seven that pre-
ceded ; and it may be matter of surprise that the Greek author did not take
advantage of this to simplify both the nomenclature of his sounds and his pro-
cess of arriving at them. The use of the term Trda-uVf dia pason, *' through
all," to signify the sound which makes an Octave with any other sound, is proof
that the Greeks were aware that all the musical relations were presented in the
interval which makes an octave, and that any other sounds were only Octaves to
some that had gone before.

On examining the names it is plain that the three notes between the Key-note
and the Fourth inclusive, are called the " uppermost set," and the three be-
tween the Fifth inclusive and the Octave are called the " middle set;" while in
each of these sets the notes are distinguished into an " uppermost," an *' upper-
most-but-one," and a '* diatonic,''^ the origin of which last term has been in-
timated.

In the second octave the three shrillest sounds are called the " ultra or ex-
treme set," and are distinguished into a ** lowest," a " lowest-but-one," and a
" third;" the " lowest" or shrillest of all, being the Double Octave. The only
difl&culty therefore is in the meaning of the terms diezeugmenon and synemmenun,

106

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

had the luck, by the mere fact of their being the ancients, to
have the first chance at trying their hands on all imaginable
subjects ; and great has been the outcry of their ** wisdom,"
raised upon this simple ground. The ill success of their attempts
in music, is proof that they had no patent from the gods but
their priority of birth.

As intimated already, the failure of the ancients is traceable
to the fact, that after having discovered that dividing a string
in the proportions of 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 4, gave sounds

which appear in the three next. And on this may be observed, that the sounds
in the class of diezeugmenon are formed or formable from, the corresponding
sounds in the class of hyperbola^on (that is, Xhenete from the nete, and the trite
from the trite), by augmenting the string of the latter by a third of itself. And
the sound called nete synemmendn is or may be formed from the nete hyperholcBon
by augmenting the string of the last, not by a third of itself, but by a half ; and
the trite synemmendn (if its construction as quoted may be depended on) is formed
by the same process from the trite hyperbolcsdn. The suspicion therefore may
be, that synemmenon (from <tuv and ei9trt>j) meant what a sailor would call
" fished" or •* spliced," augmented by the application of a portion of like matter,
viz. to the extent of the simplest fraction or one half; and that diezeugmenon
(from and ^syyo?) meant ** made up into yokes or pairs," or completed to
an even number, as three oxen would be by the addition of a fourth. If this
should really be the meaning, the translators have bandied the terms about un-
der the titles of "conjunct" and" disjunct," with very little chance of being the
wiser for it. And as the Greek writer in two cases out of three arrives at the
sounds by a process different from that in which the names may be held to have
originated, it may be inferred that they were named by somebody before him,
and that he took the names without caring whether he arrived at the sounds by
the same process as the inventor, or only by one equivalent in the result.

The reason why no sounds appear under the names of paranete synemmenon
and paranete diezeugmenfm, is because these sounds are identical with the trite
diezeugmenon and nete synemmenm ; as will be found on trial. And the reason of
the last two names being preferred to the others, was probably that they were
shortest; though it involved the solecism of sounds being called ** third" of a
set, without any appearing under the title of " second." It may be gathered
from the note of Meibomius in p. 54, that in some copies the other names actu-
ally appear; mirCi confusione, et lectione insulsd, he says, though the fact is
valuable as pointing to the two ways of arriving at the same sound, and ex-
plaining the origin of the nomenclature.

Nicomachus expressly remarks the identity between the paranete diezeugme-
non and nete synemmenon ; and indiiectly between the paranete synemmenon and
trite diezeugmenon, for he states that one is at the distance of a tone and a half-
tone from the Octave, and the other of a half-tone and a tone (See Nicoma-
chus, p. 22, 23, Edit. Meibom.). He also describes the trite synemmendn as being
at the distance of a half-tone from the Octave; which by comparison with what
he calls a half-tone in other places, makes the sound assigned by Meibomius in
the table attached to the " Section of the Canon."

It is plain from an expression at the commencement of the Section of the
Canon," that its author knew that the difference in the pitch of sounds was
caused by the difference of velocity in the vibrations. As an example of the
time that may intervene between the starting of an idea and its developement.
the first who demonstrated the laws of the vibrations with any exactness, is
stated to have been Dr. Taylor, an English mathematician, in 1715. See
Encyclopedie , Art. cokde sonore.

On the whole, the Euclidian scale turns out to be the notes of the Minor
series, shockingly out of tune, and without the Major Seventh which the
moderns introduce in ascending. It consequently is not the scale of the old
Scotch music and the Chinese, represented by playin? on only the black keys
of the pianoforte ; which consists of the notes of the Major series, wantmg the
Fourth and Seventh.

Enharmonic of the Ancients, 107

which the ear recognized as productive of musical effect, they
did not go on to try the result of dividing it in the next simpler
proportions of 4 to 5 and 5 to 6, and continuing the search on
the other side of the Fifth, by trying such simple proportions
as would produce sounds in that direction. And this leads to
the general questions, why the simplicity of proportion in the
divisions should be connected with musical effect, and what is
the nature and degree of the evidence that this is really the
case. It will be assumed, in this stage, that the reader is ac-
quainted with the discovery of the moderns, that the number
of vibrations made in a given time by different portions of a
uniform string stretched with a constant weight, is in the in-
verse ratio of the lengths.

* Since thq. combinations of sounds described under the title of
Harmonious, agree in producing a pleasing effect upon the ear, it is
reasonable to conclude that the cause of this common effect is to be
looked for in something that is common to all the combinations.'

^ Now the striking circumstance common to them all, is that the
proportions between the number of vibrations made by the two strings
respectively in a given time, are the simplest that numbers will admit
of; or in other words, are expressed by the briefest and least compli-
cated numbers that it is possible to bring together. In the case of
unison for instance, the proportion is that of equality, or as 1 to 1 ;
which is the simplest that can be devised. In the Octave, it is as
1 to 2 ; which is the next simplest. In the Fifth, as 2 to 3 ; which
is the next. In the Fourth, as 3 to 4. And so on.'

* It is reasonable therefore, and according to the allowed rules of
natural philosophy, to conclude, that this common property is in
some way or other the cause of the common effect. Why or in what
manner the effect is produced, it may not be practicable fully to ex-
plain; any more than it is practicable fully to explain, why vision
takes place when an image is formed on the retina or membrane of
the eye. But whether it can be fully explained or not, there is nothing
to destroy the evidence, that the fact observed is in some way the
cause.' — p, 2.

The attempts to proceed further with the pursuit of the cause,
will be noticed all together in another place.

* If then it is asked, how it is proved that the lengths determined
by the proportions stated, are what produce the veritable harmonious
combinations whose names are attached, — and how it is known that
a little more or a little less might not be as good or better, when per-
haps the difference altogether is less than can well be appreciated by
the ear, — the answer is, that the coincidence of all the agreeable effects
with the simple proportions, is evidence that the simplicity of the
proportions is the cause of the effect, and consequently these propor-
tions are what produce the agreeable effect, and any others are not.
To object, that for all we can tell, some others may be as good or
better, — is like objecting that for all we can tell, there may be a figure
that shall look rounder than the circle that is made with a pair of

108

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

compasses. The way to make a figure appear round to tlie eye, is to
give it the mathematical property on which the sensation of roundness
is known to depend. And the way to make a combination of sounds
agreeable to the ear, is to give it the mathematical property with
which the agreeableness of combinations in general is known to be
connected." — p. 3.

' If nature had presented us with only one harmonious combination,
there would have been a doubt about the dependence of the effect on
the cause assigned. But it is because she has presented us with a
multitude, all agreeing in the same circumstance of simplicity of pro-
portion, — that the dependence is definitively proved.' — Id.

The Pythagoreans did not advance this proof, for the best of
all reasons, which is, that they do not appear to have ever dis-
covered the general dependence of the harmonious combinations
on the simple proportions at all. They began in the way to dis-
cover it ; and then diverged. Among the multifarious scales
presented by Ptolemy * as the produce of their industry in di-
viding the Canon in every way except the right, —

^ instances may be found in separate places, of a correct Minor
Third, Minor Sixth, and Major Sixth ; but none, so far as has been
observed, of a Major Third. The insulated occurrence of these in-
stances, proves that they make no part of a general system of depend-
ence on the simple ratios.' — Note in p. 28.

If the harmonious combinations are classed according to the
simplicityt of the proportions concerned in making them, —
which, without debating the reason here, coincides with the
judgment of the ear as to the degrees in which they respec-
tively possess the quality from which the name " harmonious"
is derived, — they will stand as follows.

Proportion of the number of vibrations made by the
V two strings respectively/ in the same time. y

Unison 1 : 1

Octave 1 : 2

Fifth 2 : 3

Fourth 3 : 4

Major Sixth 3 : 5

Major Third 4 : 5

Minor Third 5 : 6

Minor Sixth 5 : 8

* Ptolemsei (Claudii) Harmonicorum Libri Tres. J. Wallis edidit. Oxon.
1682. Mus. Brit.

t The general rule for deciding which of two proportions is the simplest,
would appear to be, that (both being first reduced to their lowest terms, and to
the same octave,) that proportion is the simplest in which the product of the
two terms is least. If the sounds are not in the same octave, they must be re-
duced to it by doubling the first or smallest term of each ratio, as many times
as can be done without making it equal to or greater than the other term.

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

109

These eight harmonious combinations of sounds are called
Concords ; and the sounds which make Concords with the
Key-note, are called Consonances. In which it is useful to
be precise in distinguishing, that a Concord is the harmonious
combination made by any two sounds that are capable of doing
it ; and a Consonance is a single sound, that makes a Concord
of some kind with the Key-note*.

' The two numbers that express the proportion between the lengths
or portions of the same string which produce any particular interval
of sound, are called the ratio of such interval. Thus 3 : 4 is the
ratio of the Fourth ; and 3 : 5 of the Major Sixth. And since the
ratio expresses the proportion of the length of the shorter string to
that of the longer, it follows that by inverting the ratio — or taking it
with the other number foremost — there will be expressed the pro-
portion between the number of their vibrations in a given time.'

' If the smallest of the numbers which compose the ratio is divided
by the greatest, the fraction which is the result is called the measure ;
as, for example, the measure of the Fourth is |, or in decimals '75,
and that of the Major Sixth is | or '6. And the proportion of the
measure to unity or 1, presents the ratio again.*

^ Hence if it is desired to define any particular interval, as for in-
stance a Major Sixth, — it is only necessary to say that its ratio is
3 : 5, or that its measure is | or '6.'

' If the measures of the different Consonances from the Key-note
to the Octave inclusive, are marked off in succession on the sair ?
string, as for instance on one of the strings of the Guitar,' — mea-
suring from the end next the bridge, and considering the entire string
(which is to sound the Key-note ) as unity or 1, — they determine the
points at which the string must be stopped, in order to produce the
several Consonances respectively. A string thus divided — (with the
addition of other divisions to be hereafter described) — is called the
Harmonical Canon ; or is said to be divided in the canonical 'proportions.
It is best to consider the division as restricted to the space between the
head of the string and the place of the Octave, or in other words to
the upper half of the string. For any divisions belonging to a second
or third octave, are only repetitions of the proportions in the first.'

* By finding the sum of two intervals, is meant ascertaining the in-

* It would be an immense advantage in point of clearness, if a similar dis-
tinction could be carried through the various meanings now huddled together
under the terms of Second, Third, Fourth, &c. ; which besides being applied
both to the sound and to the combination, are moreover confusible with frac-
tional divisions. The Greeks had made some progress in such a nomenclature.
Thus the Fourth the sound in the Canon, is hypatun diatonos ; the Fourth the
combination or interval, is ^ic^ Tio-ffm^coV) dia tessarun, i. e. the note arrived at
bypassing " through four," (so named, as by the moderns, on the principle of
counting the notes, the Key-note being always counted as lirst or one.) The
Fifth in the Canon, \s hyp ate meson; the Fifth the combination or interval, is
Ita, Tivrtydia pente, ** through five." The Octave in the Canon, is mese ; the
Octave the combination or interval, is TTocercuVy dia pasun, *' through all."
Sounds that are Octaves to each other are also csiUQd_oivTl<peovot, antiphoni.

110

Enharmonic of the Ancients,^

terval arrived at by taking first one interval, — and then the other,
commencing from the sound arrived at by the first. For example, if
a Fourth is made to the whole or open string by stopping it at three-
fourths of its whole length from the bridge, — and if to the sound thus
produced, a Major Third is made by stopping the string again at four-
fifths of the actual distance from the bridge, — what sound is it that is
arrived at, with relation to the sound of the open string ? And the rule
is, to multiply"^ the measures together, and the product will he the measure
of the sum. For | expresses the portion of the open string which is
measured from the bridge in order to produce the Fourth; and to make
a Major Third from this, there must be taken | of the remainder.
The length therefore finally arrived at, will be | midtiplied by | ;
which is |. But | is the measure of the Major Sixth. It follows
therefore that the sound arrived at by taking first a Fourth and then
a Major Third to that, is the Major Sixth.'

* By finding the difference of two intervals, is meant ascertaining
the interval between the two sounds which respectively result from
making the two first-named intervals from some common starting-
place. For example, if a string of the Guitar is stopped at three-
fourths of its length from the bridge, there results the Fourth to the
sound of the open string ; and if it is stopped at three-fifths, there results
the Major Sixth ; — and the question is, what kind of interval is there
between this Fourth and Major Sixth ? Is it, for instance, the kind of
interval that has been called a Minor or a Major 1 bird, or any other
of the marked and decided intervals ? And the rule is, to divide^ the
smaller measure by the greater, and the quotient will be the measure of
the difference. For since the measures express the comparative lengths
of strmg which produce the two sounds, the proportion between these
measures must be the ratio of the interval, and consequently the
smallest divided by the greatest must be its measure. Thus the mea-
sure of the Fourth is | and that of the Major Sixth is | ; conse-
quently the proportion between the length of string which produces
the Major Sixth and that which produces the Fourth, (or in other words
the ratio of the interval between the Fourth and the Major Sixth) , is that
of I to I ; — and | divided by | (which makes |j is the measure.
But f is the measure of the Major Third. It follows therelore that
the interval betv/een the Fourth and the Ptlajor Sixth, is equal to a
Major Third.'— jt?. 4.

These details may be very unnecessary to proficients. But
the musicians have been of all men the most unfortunate in
their attempts to make their science intelligible ; and without
an understanding on these preliminaries, it is vain to proceed.

Before examining the intervals among the Consonances,
an account is given of what will be called the " Index Scale

* For the benefit of those not familiar with such operations, one vulgar
fraction is multiplied by another, by multiplying its upper term by the upper
terra of the other, and its lower by the lower. And to divide one vulgar fraction
by another, invert the terms of the last, and then multiply as before. To turn a
vulgar fraction into a decimal, add ciphers to the upper term, and divide by the
lower.

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

111

a contrivance which has a powerful effect in facilitat-
ing the estimation of intervals. If a string is shortened
by a certain portion of its length, as for instance one-third,
and the remainder is shortened by the third part of its own
length again, and so on, — it is plain that the sounds produced
by stopping the string at these several places in succession,
will increase in shrillness by the same interval successively, —
which in the given case happens to be a Fifth. And in the
same manner if the string was successively shortened in any
other proportion. Hence it is plainly possible for a string to
have ten, twenty, or any other number of divisions between the
h^d and the middle point or place of the Octave, of such a
nature as to make equal intervals of sound when the string is
stopped at the several points of division in succession. For all
that is necessary for this purpose, is that the proportion of the
whole string to the length at the first division from the head,
shall be the same as of the length at the first division to the
length at the second, and so on throughout ; which is easily
accomplished with the help of a table of logarithms.

This facility of dividing A 0 [the half of the string which is be-
tween the head, and the point where it is stopped to make the OctaveJ
into any number of equal musical intervals, has led to the observation,
that if it is divided intojifty-threef and placed by the side of the Har-
monical Canon or true division of the strinj^ [as is done in a PlateJ,
there is a remarkable degree of correspondence between the divisions
of this scale of Fifty-three, and those of the Harmonical Canon j in
as much as all the Consonances in the Canon agree, within a small
difference, with some of the divisions of the other. But the curious
and valuable fact is, that the indications with respect to the com-
parative magnitude of theintervals,which are drawn from the divisions
of this Scale of Fifty-three, are i'ouad upon trial to be true of the correct
intervals of the Harmonical Canon. The Scale of Fifty-three may
therefore be applied as a mechanical method of investigating and
recollecting the intervals in the true Canon ; and it will be spoken of
henceforward under the title of the Index Scale*,^

^ In this it is not meant to be asserted that the indications to be

* Observe here, that nothing is done like falling into the divisions of the
Scale of Fifty three equal intervals, as was carelessly assumed by a writer on
the subject. The divisions of that Scale are merely used as akind of artificial
memory, in consequence of the observation that what holds good of these, holds
good, to an almost inexhaustible extent, of the True divisions also.

Nothing can better illustrate this, than recounting the way in which the ap-
plication was first hit upon. The author had determined to construct a Guitar
having the neck divided into fifty-three equal intervals, and with separate and
moveable frets for each string, to fix into any of the fifty-three degrees by
means of holes like those in a cribbage-board. In this manner he expected to
indulge himself with hearing the effects of the grave and acute Dissonances
in their proper places in a single key, and a division approximating to accurate
on any prepared change of key j for it was plain that by merely committing to

112

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

drawn from the Scale will be true to an unlimited extent, or under
all imaginable circumstances of the composition and division of in-
tervals ; for this is manifestly impossible. But only that they are true
in the cases to which they are hereafter applied ; the verification of
which must depend on experiment.' — pA.

The divisions or degrees^ of the Index Scale are numbered
from the head of the string ; and it appears to require no great
effort, to remember that the degrees which respectively approxi-
mate to the measures of the Consonances in the true Canon,
taken in order, to wit, Minor Third, Major Third, Fourth, Fifth,

memory the number of degrees that constituted the respective intervals, (as, for
instance, that the grave Second was at eight degrees, the acute Second at nine,
the Minor Third at fourteen, the Major Third at seventeen, &c.) he could begin
upon any degree on any string, and arrange the frets for the execution of what-
ever might be desired. I n the progress of this, it occurred to him to try what would
be the difference of substituting the True or mathematically correct divisions, and
how far the places where these true divisions fell on commencing the calculations
from some of the previously established divisions as required in changes of
key, would differ from those of the Scale of Fifty-three equal intervals, and from
each other. His expectation was, that the True divisions, though they would
never fall far from one of the degrees of the Scale of Fifty-three, would iu the
prosecution of different changes of key sometimes fall a little on one side and
sometimes on the other. Instead of which, he was agreeably surprised to find,
that the True divisions fell over and over upon identically the same place in
the neighbourhood of the degree of the Scale of Fifty-three, with a pertinacity
which though not unlimited in extent, was truly astonishing ; and that conse-
quently, within such limits, it was as cheap to make a neck with divisions which
should be the mathematically perfect ones, as with those of the Scale of Fifty-
three. And the same numbers committed to memory which served to regulate
the one, would regulate the other. Hence the employment of the *' Index
Scale," and the construction of the Enharmonic instrument.' — Added on repub-
lication in 1839.

* Division of the octave into Fifty-three equal musical intervals j the whole
string being represented by unity or 1.

Head

I -000000

•769846

.592663

•987009

•759847

•584962

•974183

•749970

•577362

•961525

•740226

•569860

•949032

•730608

•562456

•936701

•721115

•555148

•924530

•711746

•547935

•912518

•702498

•540851

•900661

•693371

•888959

•684361

•526853

•877409

•675470

•520007

•866008

•666693

•513257

•854756

•658030

•506582

•343654

•649481

Octave

•5

•832689

•641042

•821869

•632713

•811191

•624492

•800651

•616378

•790248

•608369

•779980

•600465

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

113

Minor Sixth, Major Sixth, and Octave,— are* the degrees
14, 17, 22, 31, 36, 39, 53 ; which numbers are in consequence
called the indices of those respective sounds. Whoever can re-
member these, with a few more to be hereafter added to express
the Seconds and Sevenths, will have mastery over the instan-
taneous calculation of all the intervals existing between the
different sounds in the Canon or their repetitions in other
octaves. For example, if it is desired to know what is the in-
terval between the Fourth and the Major Sixth ; 22 from 39
leaves 17, which is the index of the Major Third ; and it will
be found perfectly and mathematically correct, that the interval
between the Fourth and the Major Sixth is a Major Third.
Or if it is desired to know the sum of a Fifth and a Minor
Sixth (in other words what sound will be arrived at by taking
first a Fifth, and then a Minor Sixth to that) ; 31 and 36 make
67, the excess of which above 53 is 14, which is the index of the
Minor Third, and the sound will be found to be correctly the
Minor Third in the second octave ; — and the like in other cases.
When, indeed, the string comes to be re-divided by beginning
afresh at some of the points of division previously established
(which is what constitutes changes of key), on carrying the pro-
cess to a great extent the application of the indices at last begins
to fail, by the apparition of two sets of measures on certain de-
grees ; though even then, it is a most orderly disorder, as will
be seen. But in all that relates to the divisions of the simple
Canon and any of its octaves, the application is unfailing. If
there is any novelty in this, it is a kind of treasure to all who
busy themselves wdth comparing intervals and poring over the
Monochord.

* Since one division or degree of the Index Scale expresses an equal
musical interval in any part of the string, it follows that three,
five, or any other given number of degrees taken together, will do
the same. The first indication therefore that is presented by the
application of this Scale to the Canon, is that there are several inter-
vals among the Consonances, which are equal to each other. Which
it will be proceeded to verify.'

' The smallest intervals that appear among the Consonances, are
those represented by three degrees of the Index Scale. The first is
that which lies between the Minor and the Major Third (or between
the indices 14 and 17). The length of string which produces the
Major Third, is four-fifths of the original string; or if the original
length of the string is supposed to be always twenty-five inches (which
is the ordinary length of a string on the Guitar), it will be twenty

* The measures of the Consonances in the true Canon, are '833 -8 '75
•66 '625 '6 "5; as may be gathered from the ratios in page 108 by
division. The horizontal line over some figures, indicates a recurring decimal.
VOL.11. H

114

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

inches. The length of string which produces the Minor Third, will
on the same supposition be five-sixths, or twenty inches and five-sixths
of an inch. Hence the proportion of these lengths to each other, will
he that of 20 : 20|. Or, multiplying both by '6, as 120 to 125. Or,
dividing by 5, as 24 : 25 ; which is consequently the ratio of the in-
terval.' — p. 4.

The same result might have been obtained by the subtraction
of intervals ; but this is given as more impressive. By proceed-
ing in the same manner it is ascertained, that the next interval
of three degrees, or that which lies between the Minor and
Major Sixth, possesses exactly the same ratio of 24 : 25. These
two intervals therefore are accurately equal. And they are the
intervals between a note and its Sharp or Flat in the same key.

' This interval will in the sequel be called a Suhtone. The object
of v/hich is to gtt rid of the deceptive term Semitone ; which owes its
existence only to the barbarous invention of Temperament.' — p. 5.

The next kind of intervals are those represented by Jive
degrees, and which appear between the Major Third and the
Fourth, and between the Fifth and the Minor Third. And
these two, by proceeding as before, are found to have one and
the same ratio, viz. that of 15 to 16. This kind of interval is
christened the Limma'\ Of course the two intervals of eight
degrees, which lie between the Minor Third and the Fourth,
and between the Fifth and the Major Sixth, are equal to one
another, as being the sum of the equal intervals of three and
of five degrees. And by proceeding as in the former cases, the
ratio of this interval of eight degrees is found to be that of 9:10.
This kind of interval is called the Small Tone. Finally the in-
terval of which a solitary instance appears in the centre of the
Canon between the Fourth and Fifth, is represented by nine
degrees ; and by proceeding as before, its ratio is found to be that
of 8 to 9. This interval is called the Great Tone. The differ-
ence between a Great and a Small Tone is a Comma\ ; and its
ratio is found by the same kind of process to be that of 80 : 81 .

It seems necessary to show cause for giving the name of
Third to two notes; and the same of the Sixth.

' It will have been observed, that among the Consonances there are
two notes under the name of Third, and two of Sixth ; of which one
is called the Minor and the other the Major. The reason of their
being both called Thirds, and both Sixths, is, that it is found by expe-
rience that both notes of the pair are not ordinarily in use at the same
time; but that the flatter or Minor set is used for a Third and a

* The Greek word Limma or LeAmma {Xu^jl(jlcc) means remainder.

t The Greek word Comma {xo/lc^oi) means a clipping, or cutting snipped off.

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

115

Sixth in certain tunes or airs, and the sharper or Major set in others.
And the employment of one set or of the other, is f ound to produce
two different kinds of musical effect ; the character of the Minor set
being plaintive, while that of the Major is lively.'

* When the Minor set of these notes is employed, the whole succes-
sion of notes, including the Fourth and Fifth, is called the Minor
series ; and when the other, the Major.' — p. 5.

The next object is to discover the remaining notes of the Canon,
or those which do not make Concords with the Key-note.

^ It is evident that the Consonances leave a vacuity at each end of
the Canon, of greater magnitude than any of the intervals which take
place among contiguous Consonances. It is reasonable therefore to
try, whether by the application of intervals similar to those discovered
among the Consonances, these vacuities can be filled up with notes
which though they do not form harmonious combinations with the
Key-note, shall form some with the notes already established under
the title of Consonances, and with one another,'

^ Notes of this kind are called Dissonances. Which does not mean
that they are notes unmusical or out of tune, but only that they do
not form harmonious combinations with the Key-note ; in contra-
distinction to the Consonances which do.' — p. 5.

' If two notes having one of the intervals which constitute a Disso-
nance are sounded together, the combination of sounds is called a
Discord.'' — p. 6.

The principle, therefore, on which the Dissonances are to be
sought to be established, is that they are to divide the vacant
spaces into intervals like those discovered in other parts of
the Canon, and are (so far as possible) to form Concords
with the Consonances and with each other. And here the
facility of estimating intervals which is derived from the use
of the Index Scale, leads to the interesting observation (as
the Americans are accustomed to say, " if true,"), that the
Dissonances are all double, the two sets differing by a Comma ;
and that the flatter set rhymes or makes Concords with the
Fourth and Sixth, and the sharper set with the Third and Fifth.
On which in the way of artificial memory it may be noted, that
the flatter set makes Concords with the Consonances of even
name, and the sharper with those of odd,

' By adding a Tone to the Minor and the Major Sixth, there will
be obtained a Minor and a Major Seventh ; and by analogy, by sub-
tracting a Tone from the Major and the Minor Third, there will be
obtained a Major and a Minor Second*. But as the Tone may either

* * The existence of a Minor Second is clearly pointed out by analogy ; though
it appears to have been in a great degree overlooked by writers on the theory of
music. Its existence, however, is easily traceable in practice. It is oftenest
discoverable in Chromatic passages (of which anon), and in changes from the
Major to the Minor Series j and many passages of these kinds are irreducible

H 2

116

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

be the Small or the Great one, these Dissonances will all be double ;
and of their two forms, that particular one must be employed which
makes harmonious combinations with the notes with which it hap-
pens to be associated.' — p. 6.

The flattest of t^je two forms should be called the Grave,
and the sharpest the ; which may be expressed in writing
by the marks ' and ' over the name of the note (as A\ A', &c.),
bemg the same that are applied by grammarians and printers
to express the respective accents of those names. The Grave
sounds may be expressed in musical notation w^ien desired, by
drawing a short line in the direction of the Grave accent, ob-
liquely through the head of the note ; which may be added
to any printed music with a pencil. As the Grave sounds are
on the whole of rarest occurrence*, it will be enough for or-
dinary purposes to mark the Grave, leaving the unmarked
to represent the Acute ; but if a desire to mark the Acute should
ever arise, it can be effected by drawing the line through the
head of the note in the direction of the Acute accent.

^ By the addition of intervals in manner as pointed out, a Small
and a Great Tone respectively added to the Minor Sixth, give
(|X^=fg) 9 : 16 for the ratio of the Grave Minor Seventh, and
(|X|=:|) 5 : 9 for the ratio of the Acute Minor Seventh; of which
the Grave makes an exact Fourth with the Fourth previously estab-
lished in the scale (^X -J^fe), and the Acute makes an exact Fifth
with the previously estabhshed Minor Third (|Xi=|), and an exact
Minor Third with the previously established Fifth.'

^ A Small and a Great Tone respectively added to the Major Sixth
give (iX-^=|p 27 : 50 for the ratio of the Grave Major Seventh, and
(|X§=t|) 8 : 15 for the ratio of the Acute Major Seventh ; of which
the Grave f makes a Superfluous Fourth (i. e. a Fourth increased by
a Subtone) with the Fourth previously established in the scale
(f X|X||=U), and the Acute makes an exact Major Third with the

to any key without its recognition. Dr. Burney recognizes its appearance in the
works of Handel.'

* Under these circumstances it will in all that follows, be instated in its place
in the Canon.'

* A conclusion contrary in some respects was come to at first ; but altered
on more experience. — 1839.

i ' The commonest practical demand for this sound, will be when the Major
Seventh is found in conjunction with the Fourth and Grave Blajor Second

of the octave above ; as for instance in the chord Dv in the key of C, where

both D and B must be the Grave forms of the Dissonances, in consequence of
their connexion with the Fourth of the key, the DMnaking a perfect Minor Third
below the F, and the a perfect Minor Third below the L)\'

* In this there may be a deg:ree of anticipation (which it is difficult always
to avoid). But the matter will be obvious on familiarity with the subject at
large.'

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

117

established Fifth (§ x|=t|), and an exact Fifth with the established
Major Third.'

* In the same manner by the subtraction of intervals, a Small and
a Great Tone respectively taken from the Major Third, ^ive (|x g^=§)
8 : 9 for the ratio of the Acute Major Second (being, in fact, a Great
Tone from the Key-note), and Qxi = ^) 9 : 10 for the ratio of the
Grave Major Second (being the Small Tone from the Key-note) ;
of which the Acute is an exact Fourth below the Fifth previously
established in the scale (f x|— |), and the Grave is an exact Minor
Third below the established Fouith (|Xf =fo), and an exact Fifth
below the established Major Sixth (IXg— ■^).'

^ A Small and a Great Tone respectively taken from the Minor
Third, give (ixL^=if) 25:27 for the ratio of the Acute Minor
Second, and (fx !=}§) 15 : 16 for the ratio of the Grave Minor Second
(being, in fact, a Limma from the Key-note) ; of which the Acute *
is a Superfluous Fourth below the established Fifth (§X|X||=|f),
and the Grave is an exact Major Third below the established Fourth
(f X |=t|), and au exact Fifth below the established Minor Sixth
(Ixi-ii).'-;^. 7.

An important addition, is the sound called the Tritone.

' The interval called a Tritone, is a Limma less than the Fifth.
It has no place in the Canon ; for no sound ever falls upon it except
in consequence of a change of key, when it is in fact one of the ordi-
nary notes of the Canon, only the Canon has been begun upon a
different sound, — as will be explained hereafter. There is however a
practical use in knowing how to delineate such an interval. Its ratio
(§X||=:|f) is that of 32 : 45 ; and it is indicated by 26 degrees of the
Scale, — which makes it necessary to be careful not to confound it
with a Superfluous Fourth, which would be indicated by 25.' — p. 7.

The fact is, the Tritone performs a grand role. It presents
the sound which, though not existing in the simple scale, is tlie
first that is required under the commonest changes of key ; and
it supplies the sound which is wanting between the Fourth and
Fifth to complete the correspondence with the vulgar notation.

• The readiest way of supposing a demand for this sound (which is prac-
tically of comparatively rare occurrence) would be if the Minor Second should
be called for in conjunction with the Fifth and Acute Minor Seventh of the

octave below J as for instance in the chord D' in the kev of E minor, where

both D and F must be the Acute forms of the Dissonances, in consequence of
their connexion with the Fifth of the key, the D' making a perfect Minor Third
above the B, and the F' a perfect Minor Third above the D'.'

' In this there is the same degree of anticipation as in the previous note. And
by an extension of the same privilege, this maybe the place for hinting the
suspicion, further dwelt on in the sequel, that the Minor Second is really a
component part of the Minor series of sounds as much as the Minor Seventh,
though composers have the right of employing the Major instead of it as often
as they please, as is the case with the Seventh.'

118

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

The Table below contains the divisions in the simple octave,
with the addition of the Tritone ; to which are added their
correct measures in decimals, and their indices in the Index
Scale. This may be called the Harmonical Canon*.

^ If it is asked, as has often been done, why the sounds produced
by the ratios of 4 to 7, 5 to 7, 6 to 7, and 7 to 8, are not in the Canon,
though the ratios are simpler than those of many that are there, — the
ansuer seems to be, that it is because they present intervals dissimilar
to those existing among the other notes, and are consequently inca-
pable of making harmonious combinations with them. They are
wheels, but not wheels that will fit in with the rest of the machine ;
and therefore they are of no usef.' — p. 7.

Chapter the Eleventh is on the connexion betw^een Harmony
and Melody.

^The ancients, by Harmony meant only being in tunej. But the
moderns have appropriated the term to the combination of such sounds

I CO CO

'(j:> CO CO

^3 t3 -o

m m m

O <j o <

— , ITS QvJ ' -^J

lO >— I «5 C^J ?C »f5 ^ ^ ^

-5 -5 5 5

C C C C

^ £ 2
H H

C/3 ai C/} O!

si o

0 S S g g ^

« >- a u o a
g O <; O <H Q

t Tartini wanted to introduce the sound produced by the ratio of 4 to 7,
under the name of za; being no other than the first of the anomalous sounds
extracted by beginners from the Bugle or Trumpet.

A^iof/^ovia, (harmonia) is from cc^f^o^M apte connecto ; which is from
apto. ScHBEVEi-ius. It means therefore the sounds being adjusted to their
proper proportions, or what we call being in tune ; and is equally applicable to
a succession of single notes, or to the sounding of several simultaneously.'

' In accordance with this, is Euclid's definition at the beginning of his " In-
troduction to Harmonics." ^A^f^oviityi Iffriv Wiffrriy^yi B-iof^yir/Kyi nai cr^xxTixn
Tij; rod h^f^offf^ivou (pv<ricj;. 'H^/uocrju,svov l<rriv to Ik (p^oyycov kou liatTTn-
f/,(/,roov, 'Toixv rd^iv X^ovrcov^ ffvyH,uy,ivov. «< Harmonics, are the theoretical
and practical knowledge of the nature of being in tune. And being in tune,
means being composed of sounds and intervals possessing a certain order."

' By MiXo?, MiXooTicx, {Melos, Mclodia,') the ancients appear to have meant
Musical Construction in general; and what they called harmony was a part of

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

119

as are agreeable when heard simaltaneously ; while they use Melody
for the arrangement of such sounds as are agreeable when heard in
succession/

^ The same scale of sounds which enables us to produce Harmony,
produces Melody. The difference between the sounds uttered in the
attempt to sing by a person who has not a musical ear and one who
has, is that the sounds of the first are not in the intervals of the scale
which produces Harmony, and those of the other are.'

' The reason why the intervals that produce harmony produce also
melody, seems to be, that melody is retrospective harmony^ or depends
on a perception of harmonical relation to sounds that have preceded.
And it appears to be no objection to this, that some persons — as is
supposed to have been the case with some of the ancients — are ac-
quainted with the practice of melody, but not of harmony or music
in parts. For their not being acquainted with the practice of har-
mony in its modern and most extended sense, does not prove that
their consciousness of the effects of melody is not dependent on a
perception of harmonical relation to sounds that have preceded.'

* The connexion between harmony and melody is no where so appa-
rent, as in the Arpeggio passages so common in music for the Guitar
and stringed instruments in general. For these Arpeggios are in
fact chords, spread out by the notes being sounded in succession
instead of together, as the means of obviating the want of sostenuto
tone inherent in the instrument. And no person can for an instant
doubt, that the composition of these Arpeggios — in respect, for in-
stance, of the determination of the form of a Dissonance — ought to be
the same as if the notes were to be sounded together as a chord.'

' The same connexion which exists in the most striking degree
among the notes of an Arpeggio, exists in a certain degree among
all others. The memory of the sounds that have preceded lingers in
the ear, and rt'quires to be accommodated as far as possible, by meet-
ing with harmonious combinations in those that follow. The rule

it. Thus Aristoxenus begins his work on Harmonics, T>7J f/.iXov? WiffTTi'
fj!>nS) 'yToXvp.s^ovs oiJffTi?^ X'Ou 'hi'A^nf^ivm 'pr?^siotJS IVieiii (jlIkv rivoi ocvtojv

'TT^urnv ovcrocvy t^ovcoiv rt l)vveif/,iv ffroi^iiMhyi' ** Since the science of Musical
Construction (^Melos') consists of a number of parts, and is divided into several
branches, it is necessary to set out with observing, that the particular one which
is known by the title of Harmonics [or relates to the nature and properties of being
in tune], is the first in order, and is of the most elementary nature." And a few
lines further on, Ka/ roi roi ^icx,y^a,fx,fjt,a,roi yi ocvtmv ihnKou 'roicav Trt?
fAiXcShicc; rd^iv. *' And their scales [or calculations'] have displayed the whole
order of musical construction."

'It has been the subject of much dispute, whether the ancients were ac-
quainted with what the moderns call harmony, or music in parts. And the re-
sult seems to be, that though they sang in Octaves which in Greek was called*
fAccyex,yiZ,iiv^ and in Double Octaves, and in the time of Plutarch sometimes in-
troduced the Fifth or the Fourth by way of accompaniment, — they never made
a science of simultaneous harmony, in the way that has been done by the mo-
derns. (Burney's Hist, of Music. Vol. I. Section VIII. — Aristot. Problem, xix.
18. 34.— Plutarch, de EI apud Delph. Tom. I. p. 649. Edit. Hen. Steph.)'

120

Enharmonic of the Ancients*

therefore for the determination of a Dissonance in a simple melodvj is
to make it form a harmonious combination or Consonance with the
nearest preceding note that admits of one; in the same manner that
would be done if they were to be sounded together. And where there has
been no such preceding note nt all, — as for instance at the beginning of a
melody, — then the rule might possibly be, that the Dissonance should
make a harmonious combination with the nearest following note that
will admit of one. But if instead of a simple melody there is an ac-
companiment of aome kind, as for instance a bass, — then the Disso-
nance must be determined by what will make a harmonious combi-
nation with the note that is to be sounded simultaneously. For the
connexion with this note is evidently more immediate, than wilh any
that is sounded either before or after.'— jo. 7.

A passage which follows, presents the clue which has mani-
festly led to the discovery of the duplicity of the Dissonances ;
though as it stands, the cause and consequence may be said to
have changed places.

^ This principle of the determination of Dissonances explains the
fact long observed by singers, that in running along the notes of the
Major series in the descending scale, the Second is flattened by a
Comma, or is made the Grave ore. For the nearest preceding note
that admits of a harmonious combination, is the Fourth ; and to make
a harmonious combination with the Fourth, the grave Second is re-
quired. Tiie difficulty therefore is to know, why the acide Second
should be used in running 2/;? the scale, as is implied to be the prac-
tice ; unless it has been preceded by the Fifth and acute Seventh in
the octave below, or is attended in the shape of an accompaniment by
some n )te that demands the other form. For otherwise, there appears
to be no reason why the acute Second should be used in ascending ;
to the certainty of making an inharmonious interval with the Fourth
that is to come after it.' — p. 7.

Almost every reader will here be struck with the probability
that some principle of concordance with a preceding or follow-
ing sound, like that which determines the form of a Disso-
nance, will explain the fact of the Major Seventh being used
instead of the Minor, in ascending in the Minor series. But
no such reason seems to be discoverable ; the reason therefore
is still a mystery*.

What is true of the Minor and Major Seventh, may be sus-
pected, from analogy, to he true of the Major and Minor

* A late Mathematical Professor in the University of Cambridge, who was
jAvell acquainted with the theory of sounds though deprived by nature to an
uncommon degree of what is called a musical ear, used to triumph over the
Professor of Music, (both, now, among the memories of other years), because
when he demanded the reason of this introduction of the Major Seventh in as-
cending, the musician could only reply ** it was because the ear required it." In
this state, however, the question appears to rest.

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

12 1

Second. But an examination of the passages in which the
Minor Second occurs (which, though not frequent, are still to
be discovered), appears to lead to the conclusion that in the
Minor series the Minor Second is seldom used but in ascend-
ing, and the Major in descending. So that the result seems
to be, that in ascending in the Minor series, the two Dissonances
have a tendency to move outwards ov from the centre of the
Canon ; and the contrary in descending. A curious additional
instance of the tendency of the musical intervals to preserve a
uniformity of relation to the centre, or to the two ends, of the
octave*.

* What are called Chromaticf passages, are or ought to be, a suc-
cession of sounds in both the Minor and Mnjor series of the same
key ; as for instance A, B 1?, B, C, C ^, D, E, F, F tf, G, G A, or in
the contrary order. Passages of this kind almost always begin on
the Key-note, and include the Minor Second. If a Sharp on the
Fourth appears, it is the Tritone, and indicates a change of key to
that of one additional Sharp ; and the chromatic sounds that next
follow, require no alteration to be in tune.' — p, 6.

The intervals in the true Canon make a striking appearance
when exhibited by taking the circumference of a circle to re-
present the whole octave, and dividing it (as is easily done by
the aid of logarithms) in such manner that equal intervals
shall be represented by equal portions of the circumference,
and others in proportion ; and then drawing straight lines from
the centre to such points of division, distinguishing the Grave
forms of the Dissonances by making the lines broken. As
an aid to comparison, the whole circumference should be
also divided into 53 equal parts, which being numbered will
represent the degrees of the Index Scale ; of which some one
or other will so nearly coincide with each division of the true

* If the existence of the Minor Second is conceded, it will lead to the con-
clusion that there ought in strictness to be anotlier flat in the signature in the
Minor series ; and, by consequence, that the key of E minor, and not A minor,
ought to be written with all natural notes, or without either flats or sharps in
the signature. It seems however to be of little consequence which of the two
is practised. In fact, as the occurrence of the Minor Second in the Minor
series is rarer than that of the Major Second, there is less trouble in writing
B b when it happens to be called for, than in writing nearly all the Seconds in
the key of A minor with the mark ^ .

t ' Chromatic is from x,^co(xcx, (^chroma) colour; and seems intended to apply to
something that is altered by successive shades or gradations, '^i? 7^^? ro (mtci^u

y^^co(/,a, 'pr^offii^'/iTon. " As what lies between white and black is called chroma
(colour) ; so what makes its appearance between pairs of other things, has the
terra chromatic applied to it. **^Aristid. Quintil. L. I. p. 18. Ed. Meibomii.

122

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

Canon, as to be not distinguishable upon a visual representation
like the present. The result may be called the Harmonical
Circle.

' The Harmonical Circle presents an accurate visual representation
of the relative proportions of the intervals to each other; and at the
same time demonstrates by inspection, the succession and alternation
of intervals described. The middle of the octave is seen occupied
by the interval called the Great Tone, and the two wings or portions of
the octave which lie on different sides of the great central interval,
are similarly divided each way from the centre towards the ends ; the
intervals belonging to the Minor and Major series alternating, and
changing at the centre*. Each wing consists of a Fourth, or as it
was called by the ancients, a Tetrachord. And the tetrachord, like
the octave, (with the help of the divisionsof the Double Dissonances)
is divisible into a central interval larger than the rest, and successive

* * By changing at the centre, is meant that an interval produced by a note of
the Minor series lies next to the central interval on one side, and of the Major
series on the other.*

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

123

intervals on different sides of it respectively equal. All of which are
very curious analogiesj presenting remarkable indications of regu-
larity and design ; and affording a wonderful exemplification of the
powers and properties of numbers, whe reby so complicated and yet
regular a system can be formed out of the siinple ratios*.' — 8.

The Twelfth Chapter is On chaRges of Key, and the Com-
pound Intervals produced in consequence."

* By playing in any particular key, as for instance the key of A, is
meant^ that the length of string which produces the note called A
upon the instrument, is taken for the first note of the Canon, or the
Key-note,— and that the other notes, as B, C, D, &c., are made to
possess their just sounds, by dividing the string A in the canonical
proportions.'

^ The ancient Greeks expressed this very forcibly, by calling the
Key-note Proslambanomenos {^^oa'ko^^^ot.vofjt.ivos) ; by which they
meant, the length of string taken io begin with. And the definition of
a change of key is, that a new portion of the string is made Proslam-
banomenos, or is taken to begin with in the calculation of the canoni-
cal divisions f.'

' Correct Division of the Harmonical Circle.' — j). 25.

Key-note ....
Grave Minor 2nd
Acute Minor 2nd
Grave Major 2nd
Acute Major 2nd
Minor Third . .
Major Third . .
Fourth

. 0
, 33
. 39
, 54
. 61
, 94
115
149 ,

, 0
, 31
. 53 .
, 43 ,

, 10 ;

, 41
, 53 ,
24 ,

9
16
16
22-
32'
3S'
48-6

Fifth 210 „ 35 „ 11-4

Minor Si.xth .... 244 „ 6 „ 21 "2

Major Sixth 265 „ 18 „ 27*4

Grave Minor 7th . . 298 „ 49 „ 37-2
Acute Minor 7th . . 305 „ 16 „ 44
Grave Major 7th . . 320 1 „ 43-4
Acute Major 7th . . 326 „ 28 „ 50-2
Octave 360

f * This changing of the place of the Froslambanomeros or Key-note is very
clearly described by the ancients. Olov, 'ptotI yXv rev (^vau (^cc^vtcctov (p$oyyov
'ff^oaXa,(/,^ccvoy.iVQv, cog Iv tm vTro^oo^ioo r^oTTM, Tt^if/,i^x, jcoct ^Sitjjv ttjv '^^os
rovrov ocvTi(pMvov, xoci <rov$ ciXXov? kktoc, 'tt^os ccurou$ (r^^^^iv ovo/!4,ol^oficiv'

VOtI OCVTYIV (/.iffYiV^ T^V VVV CCVnr\(pO)V0V rCO 'r^OffXciJt/^I^CCVOfZ.SVM, Iv Toi^U 'PT^Off'

y.ccf/,Qcx,vof/,ivov ^if^zvoiy Kot) Tyjv rocvryis a.vri'(pMvov (/.iff'/iv v'7ro6if/Avoiy kcu rov$
aWovt TOJTOis avo(,Xoyov^ ovroj x^cof/,z§o(, too ^ocvri <ru(rTr,ju.xTi, -roXkcixi;
zat Tov f/,iTcc^h T^offXccf/^f^oivo/CAivoo Jioc) f/^iaTig 'iva, riva, 'pra.^aXccQovrzg, ug /z^^^iV
rod ffvffTYii/'CCTo:^ ■tt^g; tovtov ci^fjco^ofjt,zv. ccvdyjiyi %\ \<p' ZKciffTov ffUffrYiy^ocros^
tXuovuv 'yf^oTi^ivTcov (TUffTyif^c^rMV , as n (jiXffn ^^os ryiv y.i.ffnv '^X^^^ ri wg o

'ff^O(TXct(A^CCVO[XlV')S TpOS TOV TT^OtT^lX/U.^CCVOf^ZVOVj OVTUS OVTiVOCOVV TMV 0 [JLCOVV fAUM

£;^£/v cr^oj <Tov o(j(.uvv[aov^ kou oc-ttc/.v 70 a-ucryif/^oc ^oos ol-prav 7o erva-7yjf4,a.
" Sometimes we take for Proslambanomenos the sound which is nat\irally the
deepest [viz. the sound of the whole or open string], as is done in the Hypodorian
mode, and for the Octave the sound which makes that concord with it; and the
other sounds we name according to their relation to these two. And sometimes
we take the Octave, or the note which makes that concord with the actual

124

Enharmonic of the Ancients*

* At the same time this new length of string is not taken at hazard,
but is itself determined by some or other of the canonical proportions ;
in consequence of which a number of striking effects are found to be
produced. It is a sort of building one pile of harmony upon another
pile ; in which it is easy to imagine that the effect may depend on
the foundation of the new pile bearing some definite relation to that
of the old.'

^ For example, in playing in the key of A and changing to the key
of D fas happens wbea there is a change from three sharps to two) —
what is done or ought to be done is, that the length of string which
sounds D to the otiginal A, (being, by reference to the HarmxOnical
Can(m, three-fuuiths of the strinjj; that sounded A), is made into a
new ProslambanomenoSi and the canonical divisions calculated afresh
upon this new foundation or Key-note.'

' It will be perceived by application to the Index Scale, that
tbe divisions of the stiing arising from this new calculation, will
be only imp rfectly represented by the divisions of the old. A great
many will be found to be represented ; but some of them will not.
It follows therefore that it will not be enough, to take the notes of
the old key for those which they may be nearest to in the new.' — p, 8.

' The new divisions necessitated by the changes of key, create a
number of intervals that may be called Compound ; because they do
not exist among the divisions of the Canon in its simple state, but
only mark the places where these divisions fall at different times, in
consequence of the calculation commencing in different parts of the
string. These intervals will be best dlustrattd by being shown on the
finger-board of the Guitar.' — 9.

The confounding these compound intervals with simple ones,
is at the bottom of all the outcry raised against the practicability
of playing in correct harmony. If a dancer were to perform
in a certain order a succession of steps of various lengths
(bearing, for instance, some resemblance to the intervals in
the Canon as displayed by the Harmonical Circle), and if by
giving a circular direction to the dance it should be contrived
that one of the dancer's footsteps in going round the second
time should fall upon the first of the traces of the old, but that
it should not be the first step in the figure that so fell but some
other, — it is plain that of the traces left on going round the

Proslambanomenos, and put it for Proslamhanomenos ; taking its Octave for a new
Octave, and the other notes in a corresponding manner through all the system.
And frequently we take some one note between Pras'ambano menus and Octave,
for the beginning of the system ; and tune to this. But it is necessary that in
every system, of the many which may be taken, the same relation which exists
between the Octave in one system and the Octave in another, and between the
Proslambanomenos in one and the Pro^lambanumtnos in another, should exist be-
tween each of the notes of the same name in the two systems respectively, and
between the entire of one system and the entire of the Other." — Gaudentii Philo-
sophi Harmon. Introd. p. 21. Meibomius.

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

125

second time, some might coincide with the old, but some would
not ; and the differences, would be what have been called com-
pound intervals. But it would be a strange and babyish
mistake, that should raise a difficulty out of this, and say,
*' How is anybody to undertake to dance compound intervals?"
If the simple intervals are performed correctly, the impossi'
bility with respect to the compound is not in making them,
but in not making them. They come there of themselves,
because they cannot help it. And if there is some instinct, or
sense of rhythm and proportion, which directs the dancer to
make the simple steps of the various longitudes supposed, there
would be no possible way of preventing the exact execution of
the compound intervals, except by persuading the dancer to do
violence to the instinct, and cut and shuffle the different steps
into some kind of morbid equality,— vjould be a tempera-
ment. But there is a craft in everything ; all the world is mys-
tifying and mystified by somebody. The fact is, that the voice
and violin are the only instruments that have perfect command
over the power of making the correct simple intervals (or as it is
technically called, just intonation) in all possible situations
and beginning from all possible points*. And the singers and
violinists are weak enough to be persuaded to say, ** We must
sing and play out of tune, or what would become of the players
on imperfect instruments And the crime of the players on
imperfect instruments is, that instead of attempting to remedy
their deficiencies, they try to persuade others to reduce them-
selves to the level of their imperfections. A common chamber
organ shall have eight stops, which implies the pipes of eight
organs joined in one; yet noborly has thought of making an
organ to play correctly in the Major and Minor of three or four
of the most closely related keys, though it might be done at
less than the expense of an organ with the same number of
useless stops. The whole gothicism of temperament, may be
suspected to have come in with monks and organs ; which is not
saying that organs should be abolished, but that they should
be made to play in tune in such variety of keys as may be found
consistent with practical convenience, and that this is of vastly
more importance than being adorned with all the trumpet and
hautbois stops that could be found at Haarlem. Humanity
dearly loves being in tune ; and the first sectarian chapel-owner
who shall have the spirit to build an Enharmonic organ at half

* Addition should in strictness be made in favour of the Sacbut or extensi-
ble Trumpet {SacabucJie, Spanish ; from sicar *' to draw out," and buche " throat
or stomach"). It is understood that some of the continental musical establish-
ments hava formed bands of Sacbuts, tenor and bass.

126

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

the expense of one with the ordinary number of useless stops,
will find his account in it in the extension of his heresy.

The description of the different kinds of changes- of key, pre-
sents an instance of the accuracy of the knowledge of the
ancients on certain points.

* There seem to be three kinds of changes of key, or as it is called
hy inus'icmnSf Modu/at ion. The first may be termed Consonant; which
is when the place of the Key-note, whether it is changed once or many
times in succession, falls on some of the Consonances of the first or
original key. And this, as making the most marked and harmonious
connexion between the old and the new key, may be considered as the
best*, and is also the most usual kind of modulation. The second
kind may be termed Complicated; and is when, after the Key-not«
has changed to one of the Consonances of the original key, the next
change is to one of the Consonances of the second key but not of the
first. As for example, when from the natural key of C the first change
is to the key' of the Fifth, which is that of G or one sharp, — and the
next is to the key of the Fifth of G, which arrives at the key of D or
two sharps, being in fact on one of the Dissonances of the original
string, the acute Major Second. The third kind may be called Dis-
ord£rly ; and is when the Key-note migrates to a Dissonance or some
still more irregular interval at once. This last kind is the rarest of
all. In all kinds of changes of key, the Key-note ordinarily returns
in the end to the place from which it set out.' — p. 9.

The " Division of the Enharmonic Finger-board" (Ch.
XIII) is a large experiment on the powers of the Monochord,
or more properly (if no objection is made to the expression)
of six Monochords, which might be taken for the definition of
the instrument finally produced. And as this contains the prin-
ciples which must guide the calculator for every species of Enhar-
monic instrument, no royal road to familiarity with the subject
can be recommended to him, so good as going with his own hand
through the whole of the process next described.

*The first object of the Division must be to procure the power of
playing correctly in difi^erent keys, one at a time, by means of a
separate arrangement of the frets tor each key. The next (which is
what is treated of under the head of Mutations) is to try to what extent
it is possible to provide for changing from one key to another during
playing, and without stopping to alter the arrangement of frets.'

* Take a copy of the Harmonical Canon [in page 118], and in the

fjt,a,r(av, tmv t£ (Tw^ireov jca.) c&a'vv&lrcov. aXX' cx.i yAv \k ixvyi^ctjvcov Xccy^ccvo-
f^ivxi "hioc^nyariov ^(x,piicrTi(ia.i. " Changes of key are made in various ways
among the notes, upon any of the intervals either compound or the contrary ;
but those which are made upon Consonances are the most pleasuig." — Ari&tides
Quintilianics de Musicd, Lib. I. p. 2b. Meibomius.

Enharmonic of the Ancients. 1 27

left-hand margin, opposite to the word Key-note, write with a pencil
the name of the note which is to be first taken for the Key-note, as for
instance A ; and in the same way write B \) and B b' opposite to the
Grave and the Acute Minor Second, B' and B' opposite to the Grave
and the Acute Major Second, C to the Minor Third, C S to the Major
Third, D to the Fourth, D J to the Triione, E to the Fifth, F to the
Minor Sixth, F ft to^the Major Sixth, G' and G' to the Grave and the
Acute Minor Seventh, G ^ and G J' to the Grave and the Acute Major
Seventh, and A again to the Octave. Call this the Model. ^

* Divide a sheet of paper into six perpendicular columns, to cor-
respond with the six strings of the Guitar ; and across these columns
rule fifty-three lines, to represent the fifty-three degrees of the Index
Scale. Number the lints at the margin towards the left.'

* The sixth or thickest open string is to be E ; which on reference to
the letters in pencil on the model, appears to be the Fifth. And the
next fret or division is to be F, which is the Minor Sixth. By reference
to the model, the measure of the Fifth is •66''', and the measure of the
Minor Sixth is -625. Say th^, As '66 : -625 : : 1" (which represents
the length of the whole string: '9375 the proportionate length re-
quired to make F on the sixth string when the whole string is E and
the Key-note A.'

* The number of degrees of the Index Scale between the Fifth and
the Minor Sixth, is five. On the fifth line therefore from the top of
the ruled sheet, and in the left-hand column which represents the sixth
string, write F -9375.'

^ The next division is to be F % which is the Major Sixth. By re-
ference to the model as before, the measure of the Fifth is *66, and
the measure of the Major Sixth is '6. Say therefore As -66 : '6 T ; 1*
: '9, the proportionate length required to make Fj$onthe sixth string.
The number of degrees of the Index Scale between the Fifth and the
Major Sixth, is eight. On the eighth line therefore from the top of
the ruled sheet, and in the same column as before, write Fft '9.'

''Proceed in like manner till all the divisions of the octave? with the
addition of the Tritone, are marked on the sixth string. On passing
the limits of the letters marked on the model, — as will be the case on
going beyond A the Octave, and proceeding to find the place, for
instance, of B b\ — it will be necessary to suppose the representation of
a second or shriller octave on the Canop, and to employ the measure
of B in this second octave, which will be found by halving its
measure in the other. Whatever relates to the Tritone, write with red
ink. Distinguish the number on which the Key-note falls (which in
the present case will be '75 on the 22nd line), by a cross or other
mark.'

If these proportions are transferred to the finger-board of the Guitar
(as will be done by subtracting the decimal fractions found above, from
unity or 1, multiplying the remainders by the number of inches in the

* As noted before, a horizontal line over any figures represents a recurring
decimal.

128

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

open string, and measuring off the resulting lengths from the head of
the instrument), it is plain that they will determine the points at which
the sixth or E string ought to be stopped when the Key-note is A.'

* Tne next or fifth string is to be A. Proceed therefore to divide it
on the same principles as before ; which, as the Key-note happens to
be expressed by the whole or open string, will be done by writing off
the measures from the model, on the lines corresponding to the degrees
of the Index Scale, in the column that represents the fifth string.
And it is plain that if these proportions are transferred to the finger-
board, the fifth string will only require to be brought into unison with
the A as sounded by stopping it at the place previously established
for it on the sixth string, for both the sixth and fifth strings to be
prepared for playing correctly in the key of A.'

^ Proceed m the same manner with the fourth or D string : and it
is evident that this string on being brought into unison with the D as
sounded by stopping it at the place established for it on either of the
preceding strings, wdl also be prepared for playing in the key of A.
And the same with the other strings. When one of the open strings
is to express a Dissonance,— as will be the case in the present in-
stance with both the third and second strings, which are the G and
B, — make it the Acute form and calculate the divisions accordingly.
It is unnecessary to write anything in the column which represents
the first or thinnest string ; because it would be only a repetition of
the sixth.'

^ When this is done, the sheet will present a plan — or as the
ancients would have called it, a System"^ — for stopping the strings
correctly in the key of A, in either the Major or Minor series.'

* Rub out now the letters in pencil on the model ; and prepare for
making a system in the key of B \), by writing Bb opposite to the
Key-note, C V and C b' opposite to the Grave and the Acute Minor
Second, C and C opposite to the Grave and the Acute Major Second,
D b to the Minor Third, D to the Major Third, and so on.'

' Divide and rule another sheet of paper as before ; and make a
System for playing in the key of B b' In this case the E string will
be the Tritone, and its divisions must be calculated accordingly. And
the second open string will be C b' and not B ; because the Minor
Second in the key of B b, is not B but C b-'

' Proceed in the same way till a.System. is made for each of the keys of
Ab,A,Bb, B, C,Db, D,E b,E, F, FS,G. If Systems are made in the
same way for the keys of G #, AS, B 5, C b, C fi, I) S, E fi, F b, G b,
they will be found identical in point of division with some of the
before-mentioned ; viz. that of G J with that of A b, A # with B b,
B with C, &c., one mode of division being common to the two

System is that which is composed of more than one interval." Euclid. Introd.
Harmon. Eiichd afterwards enumerates several kinds of Systems ; so that this
is, in the sense of the ancients, a System, though not the only thing so called.

* The scale or table by which any System is represented or written down, was
called by the ancients ^/^y^a^^a (diagramma).^ — Note in p. 10.

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

129

which are represented by the same sound in the ordinary musical
scale, the only difference being in the pitch of the whole. And in
the same way if Systems were made for A X, A b b, &c. they would
be identical in point of division with those of B, G, &c. So that the
twelve Systems first named, make provision for all possible keys.

^ Divide and rule another sheet of paper as before, and collect under
their appropriate degrees the whole of the measures found in the
Systems hitherto described ; marking in the same manner as in the
Systems copied from, all those which have ever been made Proslam-
banomenos or Key-note. When measures more than one present them-
selves for the same degree of the Index Scale, write them one over the
other in the order of their magnitudes. Call the result the Collective
Systern*,

' After all the complications involved, there will be found only five
degrees which present two measures. Eight more are without
measures at all, and are subsequently supplied with such as appear
best calculated to increase the number of measures that may on occa-
sion be taken for the Key-notef .'

^ These proportions, transferred to the finger-board, will give the

* * This collection of the contents of several Systems into one, may be sus-
pected to be what was called by the ancients V:^ex,rcx,7ru}tvufft; — KccrocTrvjcvuffKi
TO liiay^eti/.^cx,. ** Crowding — To crowd or set the scale thick with intervals." —
Aristuxen. Harm. Elem. p. 7. Meibomius.

"Ert rcov }ia,(r'ry}/u,a,T6i)v a, f/.iv Iffriv oc^aia,' a, ^£ 'Ti'VTCVoi. '^vzvoi fjuv t«
IXa;^/(rTa, oji ex.! "hiitriis. oc^ccioi ^2, ra, fj^iyiirrcx,, to ^jx ri(T(ra,pojv. Also
of the intervals some are thinly set, and some thickly. The thickly set are the
smallest, such as dieses; and the thinly, the largest, such as the Fourth. — Aristid,
Quintilian. ds Musicd, Lib. I. p. 14. Meibomius.

t As the choice of these is to a certain extent discretionary, some alterations
have been made on the set originally published ; besides an inaccuracy cor-
rected.— Added in 1839,

* It would be easy to extend the number of bars that may be taken for the
Key-note ; at the expense of increasing the number of double bars. For
example, by increasing the number of double bais to twenty-six (making in the
whole seventy-nine divisions in the octave) provision may be made for all
the twelve keys and the whole of their Consonant modulations ; and by the
following addition to the empiric rule, the bar may always be determined with
accuracy as before. When the Key-note is on one of the bars of a double bar,
all the canonical numbers which fall on a double bar must take the same kind
of bar as the Key-note,— that is, if the Key-note was on the sharpest of the two
bars they must ail take the sharpest ; and the contrary. But in addition to the
twenty-six double bars above-mentioned, two more bars (9 and 48) must be made
double by means of a blank bar (or one without any measure in figures upon
it), being drawn a&ove; and one more (49) must have a bar of the same kind
drB,xviibeluw ; which brings the bars thus treated within the compass of the rule.
Though there appears to be no use in a complication of this kind for practice on
the Guitar, it is matter of considerable curiosity, and may possibly be of service
for some purpose at present unthought-of.'

* The same kind of process might be extended, with apparently no assignable
limits; and there can be no doubt that by continuing it, the blank bars would
in time be supplied with measures, and new blank bars necessitated, which
would be supplied with measures in their turn. In some such manner it is
probable that Asclepiodotus arrived at his reported 220 divisions ; and gave up
the subject in despair, on finding that he attained to no conclusive or impassable
result.'

VOL. II.

130

Enharmonic of the Ancieiits.

power of playing in any of the possible keys, one at a time. Each
measure is made applicable to all the strings, by being drawn across
the whole breadth of the neck, the line which marks it being called a
bar. The bars which may be taken for the Key-note, are distin-
guished by a X upon the line which runs down the middle of
the board, and those which have only a deficiency among the Minor
Seconds or the grave forms of the Sevenths, by a \/ ; — the cases
in which a pair of Dissonances is perfect, being at the same time
distinguishable by their being distant by a Comma, with which view
all the intervals that are Commas have a short horizontal mark across
the line which runs down the middle of the board.'

^ The practical application of these numerous divisions, is effected
by means of short moveable frets of blackened iron, each of which
extends only to a single string. So that when the neck is prepared
for the execution of any particular key (and still more if all the
first frets on the respective strings are joined together at their nearest
ends with lines of Indian ink, then all the secondj all the third, Sic.) it
presents to the eye the usual number of frets, but of a zig-zag
form. The introduction of the grave and acute Dissonances in the
places where they are required, is effected with a facility that could
not have been expected, and by what might almost be taken for a
kindly provision of nature for the purpose. A fret of different colour
from the others (brass), slightly reduced in height so as to prevent
the possibility of catching the string improperly, serves to mark the
presence of the acute Dissonances where the grave are required for
use, and at the same time gives the power of sounding the acute
Dissonance when required for tuning one string to another.'

' To those who have gone through the process of calculation de-
scribed, it will be easy to arrange the frets for any proposed key by
the apj[)lication of the indices or canonical numbers ; which is called
telling off. When in the course of this operation a degree falls on a
double bar, the bar will be determined by the following easy empiric*
rule. The numbers belonging to the Minor series and the Fourth,
(viz. 5, 6, 14, 22, 36, 44,45,) take the bar nearest the head, or the
flattest ; and the numbers belonging to the Major series and the Fifth,
(viz. 8, 9, 17, 31, 39, 47, 48,) — to which may be added the Iritone or
26, — take the bar farthest from the head, or the sharpest. For the
benefit, however, of those who may find it convenient, the keys of
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, have the places of their respective frets en-
graved upon the finger-board, and the remainder have them described
in a table.' — p. 11.

For the Collective System which is the result, see the opposite
page.

* An empiric rule is one founded upon trial. As long, therefore, as its appli-
cation is confined to cases where trial has been actually made, it is perfectly
lei^itimate, and might more properly be classed under the head of Artilicial Me-
mory than any ether.

The most celebrated empiric rule is that known under the name of '* The
Hule of the Circular Parts," invented by Baron Napier, which solves the sixteen
cases of right-angled Spherical Triangles,

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

131

Collective System of Correct Harmony, for the Enharmonic Guitar. Containing
the Twelve Keys, with the Double Dissonances on all the Strings.

Deg. 1

Measures.

30—

t
#

\ •648

—

35-

•6328125

10—

t
*

•6075

—

—
40-

1*5832

15-

f -578703

—

•5688

•790123456

•5625

45-

•55

20-

f 7716049382

•54675

•54 ...

•533

•52734375

50-

•520833

25-

•703125

* The bars marked thus, may be taken for the Key-note, without deficiency,
t The bars marked thus, may be taken for the Key-note, without the chance
I 2

132

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

And next for changes of key during playing.

*' A change from one key to another during playing, and without
stopping to alter the arrangement of the frets, is called a Mutation*,^

^ The way to find the places of the frets required to make a given
Mutation upon any string, is to take the bar which presents the new
Key-note, for a new foundation or Proslambanomenos ; and thence tell
off the places of the canonical divisions. And the way to know at
sight whether a Mutation can be executed with correctness on a par-
ticular string, is to observe whether the bar on which the new Key-note
falls on that string, is marked as capable of bein^ employed in that
capacity. If not, the same notes must be looked for on some other
string.' — Id.

In all this it is interesting to see how difficulties sink in the
encounter. The change to the Relative (or as it would more
properly be called the Synonymous) Minor, reduces itself to
avoiding the acute Second of the old key, and using only the
grave one. The change to the key of the Fourth (or one sharp
less), requires only avoiding the acute Seventh of the old key,
as well as the Second. Changes to the keys of one and two
sharps more, imply only a very small number of frets to be pro-
vided in such stages of the strings as may be most convenient ;
the object being further facilitated by making these frets of a
distinct colour (white). And there is in fact scarcely any pos-
sible change of key which may not in one way or other be
provided for with perfect correctness by an experienced hand.
All of which is encouraging, for the prospect it holds out of
the applicability of Correct Harmony in other directions.

Chap. XV" On the sounds called Harmonics," contains the
principles on which the production of these sounds is experi-
mentally found to rest, with surmises of the manner in which
the effect takes place. The division of the string into any
number of aliquot parts, produces a Harmonic on being touched
lightly at any of the points of division ; and these Harmonics
are all the same, except where there happens to be a coinci-
dence with some simpler mode of division, as for instance two-
fourths with the half, two-sixths or four-sixths with the divisions

of deficiency except in the forms of the Minor Second and the grave forms of
the Sevenths. The letter c between two measures, indicates that the interval is
aComma; and in the double bars 41 and 42 the extent of its application is in-
dicated by lines drawn from one bar to another. Their being distant by a Comma
or the contrary, will point out in any case whether the two Dissonances con-
cerned are perfect or not.

A horizontal line over any number of figures, indicates a recurring decimal.

' * MiTOcfioXyi Icrnv, ccXXoiUffii rod u-yroKSi/u.ivotJ ffvarrt (xa.ro? , r,cu rod rtj;
<puvY); ^oc^ocKTT^^os, •* A Mutation, is the transferring of the system in ques-
tion, to another place; and with it the character of the music."— ^mfttf.
Quintil. Lib. I. p. 24.

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

133

made by dividing into three, &c. The sound produced is
always the same as would be the sound of one of the aliquot
parts, measured from the bridge and stopped by a fret.
A result of this is, that no ratios can appear among the Har-
monics, but such as have for their first term, 1, 2, 4, 8, or
some other of the numbers formed by continued multiplica-
tion by 2. The only canonical notes consequently that can
appear among the Harmonics, (in addition to an unlimited
succession of Octaves), are Acute Major Seconds, Major
Thirds, Fifths, and Acute Major Sevenths ; but there will
be found the Superfluous Fifth and the Tritone, with a num-
ber of other sounds describable by the terms Superfluous and
Redundant. A knowledge of these points reduces the seem-
ing wilderness of the Harmonics to clearness.

The notes of the Bugle, Trumpet, French Horn, Trumpet-
Marine, and Eolian Harp, are Harmonic sounds ; the untune-
able noises w^hich everybody must remember who has heard
an incipient performer on the first of these instruments,
being those which are formed by the unserviceable or un-
symmetrical ratios. In a subsequent part (§ 251 and fol-
lowing) are calculations interesting to Trumpet players, on
the capabilities of their instrument ; to which increased im-
portance would be given, if improvements should at any time
be made in the construction of musical instruments on Har-
monic principles, as for instance by producing the Harmonic
sounds in remote octaves from a metallic bar* .

* The alarm lias been given that the Harmonics (and by parity of reasoning the
divisions on the Monochord) are out of tune, by growing successively too sharp.
The only publication in which the subject has been traced, is the " Treatise on
the Harmonic System by John Macdonald, Esq." (^Lundon, 1822. British Museum) ;
where it is stated that on the 3rd string of a violoncello, the Harmonics in general
are " about one-tenth part higher than they ought to be, cceteris paribus." (Seepage
entitled Postscript, but pretixed to the Preface). And the appearance is con-
sidered as confined to the Harmonic divisions.

The pheenomenon seems to be accounted for, by the resistance of the air ; and
the remedies are easy in the case of the Monochord and everything else which de-
pends on the discretionary division or arrangement of sonorous bodies. But in the
case of the Harmonic sounds, all that can be done is to note, that the errors are
only sensible on strings of considerable thickness and length, and that however
far the subdivision is continued, the error in sound will never amount to the
double of what occurs on the first bisection at the Octave.

If any length of string is taken on a Monochord and then doubled, and the first
and the doubled length are respectively made to vibrate through distances at
their middle point proportioned to their lengths, the double string will in
one vibration pass over twice the distance of the other, but the vibrations will
be only half as many in the same time. So that on the whole, the two strings
may be considered as passing over equal distances in a given time, and with the
same velocities; for though the velocity varies from the greatest to nothing
during the time of any one vibration of either string, it varies by the saiue law in
both. On this ground therefore, taken by itself, it might be presumed that the
retardations caused on each string by the resistance of the air would be of the same
final amount, or such as to continue the proportion of two to one in the number of
vibrations respectively made in a given time. But there is anotlier element, which
is, that the longer string has twice the surface opposed to the resistance uf the

134

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

Chapter XVI is " On the Compensation for Depression," or
for the sharpness caused by pressing a string down to the neck

air. The longer string will consequently be twice as much retardeil, and will be
too flat when compared with the other. And if the doubling was repeated till the
length amounted to (for instance) 16 times the length first taken, the retardations
on the several lengths would be as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16; and the sounds of the shorter
portions beginning with the shortest, (whether settled by the Harmonic division
or by frets at the same places) would be relatively too sharp for the sound of the
longest string, by intervals of sound in the proportions of 15,14, 12, 8 ; or taking
them in the contrary order, the first, second, third, fourth Octaves, &c. would
be too sharp by intervals of sound in the proportions of 1, 1^, If, 1|, &c., where
by no continuation can the exponent be made to amount to 2. On different strings,
the absolute errors at any particular place, as for instance at the Octave, may be con-
cluded to vary as the diameter and length of string conjointly.

The question is next of the absolute magnitudes of the errors on some given
string. Tune the thinnest string of a guitar to be a Double Octave to the thickest,
(which last is about '07 of an English inch in diameter and 25 inches long, being of
the same diameter and nearly the same length as the 3rd string of a violoncello
specified in the treatise referred to), and then make the thinnest string a little too
flat. Put the end of a blunt pen-knife between the thinnest string and the neck of
the instrument so that the edge may act as a fret, and mark the point where the
string so stopped ceases to be perceptibly too flat for the Double Octave to the
other. Mark in the same manner the point where it ceases to be perceptibly too
sharp ; which with attention may be brought within an eighth of an inch of the
other. Take the mean between the two ; which may be concluded to be the point
where the string makes exactly the Double Octave. Find by the same kind of
process the mean point where the string makes a unison with the Harmonic
Double Octave as produced on the thickest string at one-fourth of its length ; and
note the distance between the two means. Kepeat the experiment several times,
slightly altering the pitch of the thinnest string between each, to make the judg-
ments independent ; and take the average of the results. The point which mallei
the unison with the Harmonic will be found nearest the bridge by about one-tenth of
an inch; which is the space corresponding with one-third of a comma. And since
the error at the Octave will be two-thirds of what it is at the Double Octave,
the error at the Octave on the thickest string may be set down as § of a comma.

It follows that all which is ordinarily required in tuning two strings to be Octaves,
Double Octaves, &c. by means of bringing one of them into unison with a Harmonic
of the other, is to lean towards that side of what the ear accepts as unison, which is
indicated by the knowledge that the Harmonic is in a trifling degree too sharp.

In a system of division by frets, the corrections to be applied on this principle
are easily estimated. The errors in sound,^in the example last given, being as
15, 14, 12, 8, 0, the linear alterations required to correct them will be as j|, g^, j
|, J (inasmuch as the effect of any given linear alteration will be inversely as the
distance from the bridge at which it is applied) ; or multiplying by 16, they will
be as 15 X 1, 14 X 2, 12 X 4, 8 X 8, 0 X 16. Whence generally, if A represents
the whole or longest string, and x the length of a portion of it tak en from the
bridge, the linear correction required at the length x will be as .4 — x X And
if the distance between the Key-note and corrected Octave be canonically divided,
the corrections within it will follow a similar law in respect of the two ends.

Errors from this cause, assuming them to be sensible, will be reduced and vir-
tually corrected by lengthening the string at the bridge in the manner suggested in
the observations on Chap. XIX which follow ; on which it would be tedious to go
into details. It would appear therefore, that on the guitar, the process suggested in-
cludes the corrections of three kinds of error at once. And on a Monochord,
all that seems required, is to have the means of altering the length of the string
at the bridge to the extent of about an eighth of an inch each way, and then bring
the sounds of the string above and below the Octave fret into exact unison by making
alterations at the bridge, leaning towards that side of the debateable ground within
•which the ear cannot decide, which is gone to by lengthening the string. In this
manner a correction will be made, both for any slight degree of falseness in the
string, and for the trivial degree in which the shorter lengths might be too sharp.

On the gigantic strings of the Contrabasso or Double Bass Viol, and even on

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

135

of an instrument ; which may be considered as effected on
the Guitar, by selling the bridge awry so as to lengthen the
thickest string by the fourth of an inch*. Chapter XIX is " On
the method of correcting False or irregular Strings which it
is proposed to attain by reducing the diameter of the string in
the parts requiring it. But there is a practical objection to this ;
which is, that a string, particularly the thinnest, will want
correcting after every one or two hours' use, through the wearing
of the part struck by the hand. It is apprehended that the sub-
stance of both these chapters might be attained with advantage,
by means of a bridge where in addition to setting the bridge
awry as mentioned, any of the strings could further be
shortened at discretion to the extent of about a quarter of an
inch, and lengthened by the double; which might be effected by
making each string pass over a distinct wedge of ivory, move-
able in a groove in the solid bridge. In this manner, the length

the thickest string of the Violoncello, it is possible that some sensible sharpen-
ing of the Harmonics may take place ; and if so, it might amount to a reason
why the introduction of the Harmonics in these instances should be avoided,
and increased precautions taken in case of tuning from them. But it is satis-
factory to find, that no perturbations can arise from the source pointed out,
which can in the slightest degree interfere with the practicability of obtaining
Correct Harmony by means of the theoretical arrangement of lengths or mag-
nitudes.

* The increase of tension on pressing a string to the board, varies inversely
as the length of the part which sounds. Whence may be inferred, that an addi-
tion to the length of the string at the bridge, Avhich will correct the error when
the string is pressed down at one point, as for instance at the Octave fret, will
correct it at every other. The length so added, is called the compensation.

If the angle between the string and the plane to which it is pressed is altered
(which is best measured by their distance at the Octave fret, named the eleva-
tion), the magnitude of the compensation required will vary as the square of the
elevation. And if the length of the whole string is at the same altered, the com-
pensation will vary as f^I^^il^rii^^ ,
length of string

To find the absolute magnitude of the compensation for a particular string at
a particular elevation, lengthen the string at the bridge till the Octave made by
pressure to the fret, ceases to be too sharp for the Harmonic Octave. Mark the
points where the string passes over the bridge and head, and repeat the experi-
ment at the same pitch, with the ends of the string reversed. Take the roean of
the two experiments ; which will be free from the effects of the string being
false, or of unequal thickness in different parts.

From a number of such trials, it appeared that the compensation for the thick-
est string of the guitar, of 25 inches long and with an elevation of fifteen-
^ hundredths of an inch, was one-fourth of an inch; and for the thinnest string,
three-hundredths of an inch, with intermediate quantities for the other strings.
The cause of this difference in the strings, is manifestly the greater extensibility
of the thinner ; or the same quality that makes a turn of the screw produce
less alteration of pitch on the thinner string than on the thicker.

But the elevation of the thinnest string is usually reduced to two-thirds of
that of the thickest (or to a tenth of an inch) and the others proportionally.
The compensation for the thinnest string will consequently be reduced to
thirteen-thousandths of an inch, which maybe neglected altogether. What is
demanded therefore for practical purposes, is that the bridge should be set awry
so as to lengthen the tliickest string by a fourth of an inch. In illustration
of the utility of this correction, an eminent teacher of the guitar declared that
he had been plagued all his life with sixth strings too sharp at the Octave.

136

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

of each string might be kept adjusted so as to make its stopped
Octave agree with its Harmonic one ; which would be a correc-
tion for practical purposes*.

Chapter XVII is "On the method of Tuning." Which must-
be done by bringing one string into unison with the proper fret
on another ; for some of the intervals are always to be Redun-
dant &c.

Chapter XXVI " On Temperament" has in some degree
been anticipated; but the subject is of importance, and far
from being generally understood.

^ If the Enharmonic Guitar arranged for any key, and with its short
frets joined by lines of Indian ink as described in § 167, is placed by
the side of a Guitar on the common constructiooj — it will be manifest
that the notes of the latter are formed by making some divisions too
long and others too short, and so bringing the frets on six strings
into a straight line, at a kind of medium distance.'

^ If a statuary, instead of making fingers of the various lengths
which nature has made them, should determine to alter their lengths
for some convenience of his own, — he would perform the same kind
of operation that is here performed on the Guitar. And this would be
a Temperament ; and Temperament in music is this.'

' As in the statue the worst temperam^ent of all would be that which
should make the fingers of one common length, so in music the worst
would be that which is produced by dividing the octave into twelve
equal intervals. And this is what is put in execution on the common
Guitar ; being effected by an instrument the guitar-makers call a
compass of division, by means of which they can divide a string of any
length into intervals in equal successive proportion, of such a nature
that twelve shall be equal to half the length of the string. Other
kinds of temperament there are, which aim at altering these intervals
from their equality, in such a manner as shall bring a certain number
of keys into more tolerable tune, at the expense of throwing an in-
creased quantity of error on the rest. Of this nature are the different
artifices or rules applied by tuners, in tuning keyed instruments upon
the ordinary constructionf .'

* For increased accuracy, compare the sound of the string as stopped at the
third of its length from the bridge (or on its Octave Fifth), and also the
Harmonic Octave to the string as stopped at the third of its length from the
head (or on its Fifth), with the Harmonic Octave Fifth made by touching at the
third ; and if either does not agree, accommodate a little in the length of the
string at the bridge, with a view to bring these, as well as the Octaves, to an
agreement. If this cannot be done, the string should be rejected; or, if it has
been worn by playing, the third next the bridge should be cut olf.

If this is objected to as complicated,— everything is complicated, except being
out of tune. The writer of this saw a performer on the Irish pipes in Dublin,
who tuned his several pipes by inserting the pith of a rush, whose length he
regulated to his purpose. Surely a guitarist might do as much for the sake of
Correct Harmony,

There might, however, still be objections in some directions. Guitarists are
terribly afraidof anything that may./rtr,or that can reduce the microscopic nicety
of the touch. But where the object is to arrive at the luxury of hearing correct
sounds, some sacrifices may be made and still the good predominate.

t * Another way in which the word Temperament is sometimes used, is by
applying it to the division of the octave into an increased number of equal

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

137

^ When musical writers say " No ear could endure untempered
music," they mean that no ear could endure to have an instrument
correctly tuned for one key, and to make the notes so tuned serve for
all possible keys. They mean to say, that if it is determined to make
the same sounds serve for a multitude of keys, it is better to spoil all
the keys a little, than to have one good and the rest intolerably bad.
But they do not mean to say, that it would not be best to have all the
keys good if they knew how ; — or that any man has ever established
that he could make more perfect harmony in any particular key, than
is made by the canonical divisions.'

^ Again, when they speak of " the imperfection of the musical scale,"
they should say " of their own scale for there is no imperfection in the
scale of nature. If twelve nominal Fifths are counted on the piano-
forte, — by going, for instance, from A to E. from E to B, from B to
F jt, and so on to twelve times, — the note arrived at will be A again,
in the seventh octave ; because there are twelve finger-keys in the
octave, and seven in what is called the Fifth, and consequently twelve
such Fifths must come to the same place as seven Octaves. But
twelve successive Fifths, each made by stopping the string at two-
thirds of its previous length, are not equal to seven Octaves, for they
are more by the interval called the " Comma of Pythagoras* as
may be proved by the addition of ratios, or in a rough way by employing
the numbers in the Index Scale. For — to use the latter method — 12
times 31 is 372, and 7 times 53 is only 371. And this is spokfin of
under the title of " the imperfection of the musical scale." But it is
only necessary to place the divisions of the Canon by the side of the
Index Scale, to see that if A is the Key-note, the intervals from A to
E, and from E to B', are Fifths, but the interval from B' to F S is
only 30 degrees of the Index Scale instead of 31, being on examina-
tion less by a Comma than a Fifth ; which at once accounts for the
difference. To insist on making it a Fifth, would be in fact to go out
of the key of A, and into some other. The imperfection discoverable,
therefore, is simply the imperfection of determining to make equal what
nature has made unequal ; as in the case of the statuary who should
determine to make the fingers of the same length when they are not.'

* Temperament then, is a barbarous invention for saving trouble by
playing out of tune ; — for playing in many keys, by playing in no
key at all ; — for trying how much discordance the ear can be induced

intervals, with a view to effect an approximation to correct harmony by their
employment. The octave (as may be seen by inspection of the Harmonical
Circle) contains five tones and two limmas; and the attempt to express the tone
by 3 of the equal parts into ivhich the octave was to be divided, and thelimma by
2, led to the division into 19, which was the origin of Harpsichords with afinger-
key for A and another for B b, &c. For live times 3, and twice 2, make 19.
In the same manner the attempts to represent the tone by 5, 7, and 8 of the equal
parts, and the limma by 3, 4, and 5, led to divisions into 31, 43, and 50. And last
of all, the idea was conceived of representing the great tone by 9} which led
to the division into 53. These are improperly called Temperaments ; for their
true title would be Approximative Subdivisions of the octave. And as this sense
of the word Temperament is different from that in which it is used in the text,
it is better to keep them separate.*

* Which doubtless owes its having a local habitation and a name, to being
this difference. Its ratio is that of 524288 to 531441 ; equal to a Comma and
about one-eleventh.

138

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

to bear, instead of how much harmony it can be accustomed to de-
mand. If men have not musical instruments that will play in tune
in a variety of keys, they should be content to play in one, or else
improve their instruments. But they ought not to play out of tune
and call it music'

* If it is ur^ed that the differences are small, — the answer is, that
it is upon small differences that all excellence depends, — and that the
differences are quite sufficient to make the distinction between what
strikes the hearers as perfectly harmonious, and what does not. There
are nations that think statues with fingers of equal length are admi-
rable performances, and contemn the difference as small. The tenth
of aa inch may in some senses be called small ; but if the question is
of the smoothness of a mirror, or the edge of a cutting instrument, it
is a mountain. — But it is not true, that the differences are small. As
a rough statement, if what is called a whole note on the pianoforte is
divided into nine parts, — then three, four, five, and six of these parts
are represented on the instrument by one and the same sound ; the
difference of the extremes being nearly as great as the difference
between a uot« and its sharp or flat. It is probable that few of those
who say the differences are small, ever suspected they were anything
like this.'

* Should it be replied, that if people are pleased as they are, it is no
chanty to make them discontented, — the same argument would apply
to the fingers of the statue, and to all kinds of improvement. A child
is delighted with a hand-organ, and struck with a sense of sublimity
from the paintings of an exhibition of wild beasts; and it may be
doubted whether any of its impressions in after life, are stronger or so
strong as these early ones. But it does not follow, that men ought
always to be content with such music or such painting ; or that it should
be a point of economy to husband their progress in perceiving its
defects*. Nature seems to be in a plot, to force man to be progres-
sive ; to oblige him to be continually forgetting what he has left
behind, and pressing forward to that which is before. It is the salt
of the earth; and there is no more use in quarrelling with the fact,
than in rebuking grown gentlemen for liking claret and forswearing
sugar-candy.'

* A sophism advanced in favour of temperament, is, that the diffe-
rent keys have peculiar qualities in consequence of it ; — that one key
is lively, another grave, &c., in consequence of the differences arising
out of temperament, or in other words from the keys, or some of them,
being more or less out of tune. The mistake has probably arisen
from confounding the characters of the Major and Minor series, with
some supposed quality of the key in which they are found written.^ As
it is easier to play in a moderate number of sharps or flats than in a
great one, the keys which on tempered instruments are made to have

* In the Life of some man of note in English history, lately published Gr
brought into notice by extracts in the newspapers, the subject of the biography
is found stating with perfect gravity, that he made a point of cultivating a bad
ear, because it increased his enjoyment by enabling him to relish bad music as
well as good. It is to be hoped he cultivated the same economical relish for
b ad eggs.

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

139

the nearest approach to being in tune, are naturally those which pre-
sent a moderate number of either. Hence, as the Minor series has
always three more flats, or three fewer sharps, than the Major, — the
tendency will be for airs in the Major series to be played in a number
of sharps, and in the Minor, of flats. And from this the hearers are led
to say, how plaintive are the keys with flats, and how lively the others.
For it is observable that their opinion always flows in this direction ;
and that nobody is found attributing a lively character to a multitude
of flats, or a plaintive one to sharps. But in all this there is not an
atom of proof, that the particular merits of any key come by being out
of tune. It is easy to imagine that either the liveliness of the Major
series, or the plaintiveness of the Minor, will be increased by being
perfectly in tune ; and if any keys on the organ or pianoforte possess
peculiar power in either of these expressions, the probability is, that
being in tune is the cause. But that improvement of any kind is to
be effected by being out of tune, is certainly not to be believed without
proof.' — p. 18.

' A second sophism advanced in favour of temperament, — or, more
strictly, in favour of the non-necessity of correct harmony, — is that
the ear understands ivhat is meant and makes allowances. Which ap-
pears to be about as reasonable, as to say of a dish too much or too
little salted, that the palate knows what is meant and will make
allowances. Whether the senses are gratified or the contrary, is
matter of sensation and not of argument ; and a man may as soon
" hold a fire in his hand, by thinking on the frosty Caucasus," as
mend untuneable sounds by thinking on what they ought to be.'

' It is matter of experiment, that an instrument tuned enharmoni-
cally, is improved in tone or general power. The reason of which is,
that the pulsations of the notes, being in their due proportions accord-
ing to the simple ratios, do not shock and counteract each other as
they do when untuned by the operation of temperament.' — p. 19.

' The real question with the supporters of temperament, is seldom
clearly stated. Nobody denies that the different keys on tempered
instruments have different qualities, and that one excells in one
quality and another in another. But what is contended for, is, that
these qualities arise from the degree in which the key approaches to
the correct proportions in respect of what may be termed the influential
notes, and not in which it is removed from them ; and that the correct
proportions would in every case be better than them all. To make
an illustration from optics, — the true form of a lens is mathematically
proveable to be the parabolic. Spherical and elliptical lenses answer
tolerably well, and are easier to make. If now it should be found in
practice, that a spherical lens was better than an elliptical for one pur-
pose, as for instance for a microscope, and an elliptical better than a
spherical for another, as for instance for a telescope, — this would re-
semble the case made out for the different keys ; but it would be no
proof that the parabolic form would not be better than either. On
the contrary, the natural inference would be, that the phaenomenon
would be found resolvable into the fact, that the spherical and ellipti-
cal forms did each, in those instances respectively, approach nearest to

140

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

the parabolic form which was the true. If a passage of any kind be
executed in the correct proportions, do the temperers maintain, and
can they prove (either by the concurring testimony of persons of culti-
vated ear, or otherwise), that it is possible to mend this passage by
any alteration in the intonation ? Have they tried the experiment,
and can they tell us, what kind of deviation from the mathematical
proportions shall make a given passage more lively, plaintive, &c. ?
When pushed on these points, they answer by representing the mine of
riches they possess in the various qualities of the keys ; but they do
not disprove the inference, that in each of these particular cases the
correct proportions would be richer still.'

' The only writer who occurs as presenting an unequivocal exception
to the above, is Earl Stanhope. And by him it has been distinctly
asserted, that a " Bi-equal Third" (being half the difference between
a Major Third and an Octave, and consequently nearly coincident
with a Redundant Major Third), is better than a correct Major Third,
in music of a solemn character. But this rests on assertion only ; and
has not been supported either by the concurring testimony of persons
of cultivated ear, or in any other manner. A temperer is, by him-
self, a suspicious authority ; for as it is certain that people who have lived
where the water is brackish, think pure water at first vapid and de-
ficient in something they have been accustomed to, so an individual
may accustom his ear to untuneable notes, till correct harmony strikes
him as insipid and wanting in expression. An effect which he is
accustomed to, is removed ; and instead of it is substituted an ex-
pression, (that of purity), which he has not learned to value. If it is
argued, that salt water is the best for him that likes it, — the answer
is, that his predilection is clearly traceable to want of familiarity with
the other, and that all mankind without exception, who are placed in
fair circumstances for accustoming themselves to one or the other as
they may like best, agree in preferring the fresh.'

* The effect of correct intonation is the most sensible of all, in a
simple melody. It may appear strange that the ear should judge
more accurately of the relation of sounds when they succeed each
other, than when they are sounded together ; but so it seems to be.
The reason probably is, that in one case the attention is collected upon
a single note, to which all the error is necessarily referred ; whereas
in the other, it is divided among a number. If any person Avith an
ordinarily good ear, will try the experiment on a perfect instrument
with any striking melody, it will be found how much of the effect de-
pends on the exact proportion of the intervals, and particularly on
making the great and small Tone in their proper places. Take for in-
stance the well-known fragment of the cathedral service, which may
be represented by C C C C C B A B C, (C being the Key-note), and
try how completely the sublime and melancholy energy of the passage
depends on the just measure of the Limma (15 : 16 J and the conse-
quent existence of the great Tone between B and A, and how it will
be destroyed by moving the fret of B a comma nearer to A. Or take
the Venetian air La hiondina in gondoletta, (which contains a number
of successions of the Major Sixth, Fifth, and Fourth), and try the

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

141

effect of making the great and small Tones change places. Experi-
ments of this kind will be found to point to the conclusion, that much
of the peculiar power possessed by the human voice, arises from the
attachment to correct intonation, which the employment of keyed in-
struments has never been able to repress.'

^ Since a keyed instrument with twelve fixed sounds in the octave,
tuned in any manner that is not the division into equal intervals,
must produce different intonation in different keys, there . is no
difficulty in perceiving how one key will give a more just intonation
to one kind of musical passage and another to another. Take for ex-
ample the passages mentioned in the last paragraph ; and if it is
admitted that they are better in the correct intonation than in any
other, and grow worse as they are removed from it, — it seems to follow
necessarily, that they will be the best in that key of the instrument,
which in these particular passages approaches nearest to the correct
(or if the term is considered fairer, the mathematical) intonation. If
indeed the advocates of Temperament can prove the admission to be
unjust ; — if they can establish to the satisfaction of the ears of man-
kind at larg;e (for there appears to be no other appeal), that sounds
which are not in the musical ratios are intrinsically and absolutely more
agreeable than those which are, — then they will have shown cause for
believing that Temperament is a good perse, and that they possess a
mine of riches in the qualities of the tempered keys. But this they
have not done ; on the contrary, mankind at large invariably jumps
eagerly at correct intonation when it is to be had. And till they
do it, they will lie under the suspicion of having made a very odd
mistake ; — a mistake in the manner of him who should recommend
one man to lose his legs and another his eyes, and ground it on the
mine of riches to be discovered, in the applicability of the blind man
to be a carrier and the lame one a guide.'

' As a fair trial, it may be hoped at some time to hear a church
organ which shall produce correct harmony in a limited number of
keys (on some principle like that proposed further on, in § 255), —
played by an organist who will make the best practicable arrangement
of church music in the supposed keys, by taking all the advantage
possible of the power of change of key which he possesses, — and
accompanied by a choir trained to the perception of correct harmony.
The result would go far towards deciding, whether mankind at large
really prefer the sweet water or the salt.'

' In conclusion of the Chapter on Temperament, it may be not^d,
that much of the obscurity and inconclusiveness which attach to the
subject, may be traced to the term being used in various senses ;
among which, to say nothing of minor differences, there runs this
great source of contradiction and cross purposes, that the term is some-
times used for a certain departure made in practice from what is correct
fto something that is not so, and sometimes for a departure from some-
thing avowedly bad and intolerable, towards something that is less so.
It is desirable therefore that it should be understood, that in all that
has preceded, the term is intended to be rigidly confined to the opera-
tion by which; instead of two or more sounds required for performing

142

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

correctly in different keys, a single sound is made to take the place of
each of the others when it happens to be called for ; so that those
sounds may be considered as clubbed or tempered (in the sense in
which it is applied to the ingredients of mortar) into one.' — Additions
to Ck, XXFL p. 29.

It is but fair to add to the statement of Earl Stanhope, that
an individual of eminence in the musical world very lately de-
clared, with reference to the subject here agitated, that he had
heard an instrument of elaborate construction for the purpose
of obtaining correct harmony, — the Rev. H. Listen's Euharmo-
nic^ Organ, — and that the effect was not good. On which the
question that immediately occurs is, — Did the hearer hear
correct harmony ? F or instance, was the difficulty about the
double Dissonances arranged and provided for ? If not, and if
the theory of the double Dissonances above given be correct, no
inference can possibly be drawn from the case. It may reason-
ably be surmised, that correctness in some parts would have the
effect of concentrating attention upon those which were de-
fective. A third of a comma is usually stated as what produces
a sensible effect upon the ear. Errors of a whole comma there-
fore, concentrated on a small number of particular places, seem
competent to ruin the general effect of any system of intona-
tion. The overpowering presumption is, that correct harmony
is the thing that pleases, and that whatever strikes the ear as
peculiarly harmonious does so because it is correct harmony.
There may be all manner of mistakes and failures in the at-
tempts to produce correct harmony by mechanical means ; but
whenever it is produced, Apollo's lyre to a hurdy-gurdy, it
turns out to be what has charmed all ears when men were lucky
enough to hear it by accident.

Chapter XXVII is on the means of applying the practice of
correct harmony to various instruments. The most important
of these are manifestly the human voice, and the instruments
of the violin kind.

' To performers on instmments of the violin kind, the interesting
question is whether, for example, a boy who should begin by learning
the Enharmonic division of the finger-board, — by learning, in short,
to play right instead of learning to play wrong, — would not in the course
of a few years come forward with a great superiority in delicacy of ear
and correctness of tune, over one whose only chance of doing right lay
in going contrary to all that he was taught. It is not denied, that by
the practice of their whole lives, violin players may finally come to
play in tune. But the question is, whether they would not do this
with more certainty and ease^ by beginning with the right way instead

* Euharmonky not J^nharmonio^ was the title given to it.

Enharmo7iic of the Ajicients.

143

of the wrong. Considering it merely as matter of trade and com-
merce, — when it is recollected how many individuals apply themselves
to instrumental music of this kind as their profession, and depend on
their success in it for the degree of comfort they are afterwards to
enjoy, — it is of as much importance in this art as in any other, that
the process or manufacture should be carried on in the way that leads
to the most perfect result, and by the shortest road.' — p. 19.

To play in correct harmony on instruments of the violin kind,
it is necessary to tune two of the strings to a contracted Fifth,
according to the intended key ; which is easily accomplished by
means of a low fret across the neck at a distance from the head
equal to an eighty-first part of the length of the string, or
what makes a Comma. If while tuning two strings to be
Fifths to each other, the thinnest is pressed down to this fret,
the interval on removing the pressure will be a contracted Fifth.
The strings which should make a contracted Fifth with each
other, are on the Violin the 1st and 2nd for the keys of B and
G, 2nd and 3rd for C and E, 3rd and 4th for A and F. In the
Violoncello and Tenor there is no E string ; and the G string
which is added for the thickest, should make a contracted
Fifth with its neighbour, for the keys of B and D*. There is
no contracted Fifth on the Violin for the key of D, nor on the
Violoncello or Tenor for the key of G.

^ The question therefore is, whether a practitioner on the Violin
would not derive advantage from learning first to play in perfect tune
in one key, paying attention to the formation of the grave Dis-
sonances in their proper places ; and afterwards extending the same
study to other keys, and finally to the change from one key to another
during playing. On this last point he would have an advantage in
facility over a performer on the Guitar; because the absence of frets
removes the necessity for playing in what have been termed different
stages of the instrument. Any difficulty or tediousness in such a
process, sinks into nothing if ttiere is a prospect of advantage in the
end. And it is in reality a much simpler alfair than it appears, for
it is reducible to obtaining a familiarity with all the sounds in the
octave (which, including the double Dissonances, are only fifteen),
and acquiring a facility m taking them correctly from any point in the
string.'

* It is hazardous to speculate on the untried ; but what may be sur-
mised is^ that such a course, though at first it might appear laborious
and constrained, would end in making the performer as sensible of an
error of a Comma, as ordinary hearers are of an error of what they
call a Semitone, — and in producing a facility and precision in ail

* The necessity for these contracted Fifths appears to be acknowledged, in
the maxim of violinists that it is good to avoid the open strings.

144

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

changes of key, as unaccountable to a stranger, as the power of fluent
reading is to a person who is learning to spell. What should be
impressed on such a student is, that playing enharmonically means
playing in tune ; and that those who are taught otherwise, are taught
not to play in tune.'

* To professional singers the question may in like manner be sug-
gested, whether it would not be better that they should be taught the
true division of the scale, than one which is not the true ; — whether,
for example, they would not attain more rapidly and effectually to cor-
rectness of tune, by being taught the difference between a grave
Dissonance and an acute one, and between a Great Tone and a
Small one, as for instance between the interval of the Fourth and
Fifth, and that of the Fifth and Major Sixth, — than by being left to
find all this out (if they ever do find it), in ojiposition to what they
are taught and not by means of it. The question is like that of in-
structing a scholar in sculpture to make the fingers of the same length,
or leaving it to the chance of his native judgment and observation
how far he ever does the contrary. — And in addition to all this, the
singers have an interest in being accompanied by correct harmony ;
for it is impossible that an ear refined by the practice of a life, should
not be continually offended by the discordant sounds with which it is
associated*.'

* It seems clear therefore thfet the two most important classes of
musical artists, the singers and the violinists, have a direct interest in
the cultivation of Correct Harmony. What the general diffusion of
such cultivation might finally produce, is yet to be learnt. Mankind

* ' What seems to be wanted both by singers and violinists, is the habit of
viewing notes simply with reference to their place in the octave, or their rela-
tion to the existing Key-note ; instead of attempting to refer them to a scale of
fixed sounds. And for this purpose it would only be necessary to employ
the syllables do^ re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, according to what?was probably their original
intention, — by taking do for the Key-note in every key, and the rest for Second,
Third, &c. in succession ; which is what the French call suljier par transposition.
The Minor sounds of re, mi, /a, si, might be expressed by changing the final
vowel into the Italian

• The first step would be to obtain an exact acquaintance with the intervals
ascending and descending in the Major series ; impressing the ear with the dif-
ference between the Small and Great Tone, and with an accurate perception of
the Limma or interval of five degrees which appears in two places. Next, to do
the same in the Minor series. Thirdly, to take the Minor and Major series to-
gether, as in what are called Chromatic passages ; attending to the exact mag-
nitude of the Subtone, and its difference from the Limma, of which it is not
much more than half. Fourthly, to acquire a consciousness of the difference
between the double forms of the Dissonances, by practising passages in which
they shall respectively be called for, by virtue of a succession to the Third or
Fifth, or to the Fourth or Sixth (See § 76) ; and subsequently by executing them
in conjunction with those Consonances, as expressed either by a voice of con-
firmed accuracy or a perfect instrument. On which part of the process it may
be observed, that instead of being a complication and a difficulty, it is in reality
a simplification : being nothing but making an accurate Concord with the note
with which the Dissonance happens to be connected. And lastly, to acquire the
habit of doing all this with equal facility and certainty, from any sound within
the compass of the performer.*

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

145

has lived under a dynasty of teachers to play out of tune ; and can
only guess at the consequences of improvement, as savages may at
civilized life.' — p» 20.

Calculations are given, on the possibility of playing in the
Minor series in the upper notes of two Horns, the pitch of one
of which shall be raised a Limma by taking off a crook. And
if instead of raising the pitch of one Horn by a Limma, it
is lowered by a Great Tone, the Horns can between them pro-
duce all the notes required for playing in the Synonymous [or
as it is unmeaningly called, the Relative] Major and Minor, or
for changing to the Major series of the key of the Fourth*. The
principle of executing upon a number of Horns conjointly, has
been carried to a great extent in what has been known by the
name of the Russian Horn Band,

' On the Organ, if instead of multiplying useless stops, the pipes
were tuned for different keys, with distinct finger-boards for each
key, — the instrument would possess the power of playing correctly in
various keys, and the double Dissonances might be produced by making
the finger-keys of the Dissonances double. As the grave Dissonances
are of comparatively rare employment, it would be easy to retire
the half-keys belonging to them, in such a manner as to leave the
other set as ready to the hand as in ordinary instruments. The
Tritone should be added in each key, because it makes the number of
finger-keys (^reckoning those of a Dissonance as only one) the same as
in ordinary instruments, and moreover gives the power of making the
commonest accidental sharp. The keys might be reduced to those of
G, C, E ; or any others bearing the same relation to each other. This
would give the power of moving from the key of G Major to the
Synonymous (or Relative) Minor and to the key of the Fourth ; and
in performances in a single key, it would afford as much choice of key
as is perhaps absolutely necessary, for suiting the pitch to the compass
of the voices that are to accompany!. The Major and Minor of the
same key, would be possessed without difficulty or imperfection, in all
the three. If the same pipe can be made to serve in all the places
where the same sound occurs, the number of distinct sounds within
the octave in the three keys together would be only twenty-six ; the
measures of which are given in a Table|, the keys in which they re-
spectively appear being marked opposite to each. A monochord
formed of a drawn steel wire, might be used to determine the inter-

* * Numbers of the Index Scale, on the different Horns in order named.*
I. 0 9 17 31 34 40 48 63
ir. 5 14 22 36 39 45 53
III. 0 8 22 25 31 39 44

i ' Since the first of the keys here mentioned is that which is rich in the power
of changing to the Synonymous Minor and to the key of the Fourth, it ig desir-
able that it should be one whose pitch is best adapted to extensive use. This was
supposed to be eflfeeted by placing it on G. But any note that is preferred may
be substituted j changing the two other keys so as lo preserve the relation,
X ' Table of the measures in one octave, for an Enharmonic Organ in the keyg
VOL. II. K

146

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

vals in one octave ; and the distances on the monochord will be
determined by multiplying the measures in the Table by the length
of the string. Care should be taken that the moveable fret moves in
such a manner as always exactly to touch the under surface of the
string ; so that the string may be stopped by the slightest pressure
above the fret, without requiring any compensation for depression.
Since the effect of ecclesiastical music depends more on the concord
of solemn sounds than on intricate changes of key, there seems reason
to believe that an experiment of this nature with a church organ
would be very likely to be attended with success and reputation. If a
taste for playing in tune should gain ground, the number of keys
might be extended. The difficulty of tuning and keeping in tune an
instrument of this kind, would be much less than may at first appear.
For it is impossible that even the tuning of the sounds in question to
those of a monochord, could present more difficulty in the accom-
plishment, or be liable to more derangement afterwards, than the
tuning of the multitudinous pipes in an assemblage of stops to each
other.- — p, 21.

In such an instrument, the Key-note in each finger-board,
in all the octaves, should be of some distinguishing colour, as
for instance red.

• The same principle might be extended to the Pianoforte ; and an
instrument capable of playing in the three keys mentioned in the last
section, might be constructed for something more than twice the ex-
pense of an ordinary one. The difficulty of tuning and keeping in
tune, could by no means be equal to that which is attendant on
tuning three strings in unison for each note of a grand piano-
forte.'

^ With still greater advantage might the principle be extended to
an instrument where the sounds should depend on the vibratioa of
an elastic plate or bar, or be produced in some other way not liable to
go out of tune. Yox though some alterations might be produced by
changes of temperature, they would in the first place be very small,
and in the next, there would always be the resource of arranging the
temperature. It seems probable also, that the weight of the bars or
plates, might be employed as a mode of ascertaining and regulating
their pitch ; which would present some great advantages. The Glass

of G, C, E. The open string of the Monochord must be tuned to G.'

«C CO IQO
O ^ |XI

00 00 00 00 GO c^i-^

\fi

l-TO'-TvfS OO lO

lO HO tOrin-rflrr)
C^t^ CO tC 'O lO 'O ic; l»0 O xTivn

paw W

H WWW Wh

o o o

O OO ^ ooo

o o ooocooo

' A horizontal line over any number of figures, indicates that such figures
form a recurring decimal.'

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

147

Harmonica and the musical snufF-box appear to be the only instru-
ments of this kind that have been yet constructed ; but it is extremely-
likely that others will at some time be invented. An instrument on
such a principle, which should possess the power and facility of exe-
cution of the pianoforte, would be a brilliant improvement.' — p. 21.

Though such an instrument might be deficient in sus-
tained and varied tone, and others of the qualities attainable
on the voice and violin, it would be an excellent guide to
the practitioner on either of those instruments, and contribute
powerfully to the attainment of perfect intonation either in
solos or in concert.

Chapter XXVIII is on the proofs of identity of design
with the Enharmonic of the ancients ; which involves the
propositions this Article set out with professing to maintain.
Many evidences are found scattered in separate places, of
accuracy of knowledge and expression on the part of the an-
cients, which none of the moderns can exceed. But to these
may be added direct declarations of design, as conveyed in
their own words ; which will be given after an extract from the
comm.encement of the work, bearing on the same subject.

' The following pages had their origin in a desire to abate the un-
tuneableness of the common Guitar; which, thuugh an instrument
possessed of many agreeable qualities, has the defect of being out of
tune to a greater extent than any other that is played by means of
either strings or finger-keys. For the other instruments, — as the
pianoforte, harp, and organ, — are at all events capable of playing, in
some keys, with something like an approach to correct harmony.
While on the guitar, the errors, instead of being collected into some
particular keys, are disseminated as widely as possible among all, in
consequence of the octave being divided into twelve equal intervals ;
which is in fact necessary as long as the frets for the six strings form
continued straight lines, to cause the Octaves, and the representatives
of the same sound in different stages of the instrument, to be in tune
with each other. And besides this, the instrument has two other
sources of inaccuracy, — namely the errors caused by the increase of
tension produced on pressing a string down to the fret, and those
arising from inequalities in the string itself, or what is called the
string's being false ; either of which, if not remedied, would be fatal
to the attempt at correct harmony. So that it is quite true, according
to the observation of Pere Mersenne, that in its ordinary state « le
Luth est le Charlatan de la Musiqtte, parce quil fait passer pour bon ce
qui est mauvais sur les bons Instrumens'^.''

* It will however be recollected, that the Guitar is the representative
of the Kithara {x,i6a,^ex) or Cithara of the ancients ; and that the

* • The Lute is the Quack-Doctor of Music* because it passes off for good,
what is bad upon good instruments.' — Nouvelles Observations Physiques et Ma-
thematiques. 1648.

148

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

ancients had a kind of musical division under the title of Enharmonic^
which they applied to their principal instrument the cithara or lyre,
and considered as more perfect than the other modes of division which
were in use at the same time. What this Enharmonic division was
to do, nobody has seemed able to tell ; and since the ridicule thrown
about the subject in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus," it is
hardly safe to desire to know. The account given by the moderns
appears to be, that the artificial and difficult Enharmonic was lost
soon after the time of Alexander the Great'-' yet there exist nume-
rous works of the ancients upon the subject, from Aristoxenus and
Euclid down to Ptolemy and Capellaf. The first inference from
these remains of antiquity is, that the musical string was divided into
a very great number of parts ; and it appears from a passage preserved
by Photius, that a philosopher of the fifth century, in an endeavour to
recover the Enharmonic genus, carried the divisions to as many as 220,
but without success J. One thing however is clear; — that the ancients
attempted to improve the cithara by means of a complicated scale of
division. And if the improvement which was the object of their search
can be recovered upon the instrument where it appears likely to be
easiest of access, it may be found capable of extension to others where
the application is less obvious.'

* ' Burney's History of Blasic. 2nd Edition, Vol. I. p. 425.'

t ' A collection of them in two volumes quarto, was published from the El-
zevir press in 1652, and dedicated to Christina queen of Sweden, by the learned
Meibomius of Helmstadt; whose reported ill success in endeavouring to sing
an ancient Greek air before his patroness, is evidently the origin of one of the
stories in Scriblerus.'

' The title \s" Antiquae Musicae auctores septem Graece et Latine, Marcus Mei-
bomius restituit ac Notis explicavit. Amstelodamiy apud Lud. Elzevirium. 1652."
The contents are

Aristoxcni Harmonicorum Elementorum, lihri 3.
Euclidis Introductio Harmonica.

Nichomachi Geraseni, Pythagorici, Harmonices Manualis.

Alypii Introductio Musica.

Gaudentii, Philosophi, Introductio Harmonica.

Bacchii Senioris Introductio Artis Musicae.

Aristidis Quintiliani de Musica, libriS.

Martiani Capellae de Musica, liber nanus.*

* The reason of the authors being called seven in the title, is probably that
Capella is not accounted an ancient, who lived as late as A. D. 470.'

' The Euclid is the Euclid of geometry; and his " Introduction to Harmo-
nics," and Section of the Canon," bear the marks of the author of the " Ele-
ments."

' Ptolemy's work on " Harmonics,'* with a Latin translation and notes, and
additions from Porphyry and Briennius, was published at Oxford by Dr. Wallis
in 1682.'

J^'Or; iv(pui<rrcx,7o; o * KffzXyi<priohoTo? <rz^) f/,ov(Tix,'/iv yiyovug, to Ivoc^f^oviov yiv6$
ocToXboXo; f ov^ oloffTi lyiviro avccffao'eia'^ai, fcoii rot tcc aXXa, tvo yivn koctoc-
Ti^eo)) zee) a.vocz^ova'dfiivo;, to, ts p^^cojuocriKov ovof/,Di,Z^of/,ivov, kcc) to ^iccTOVizov'
TO Ti ha.^f^oviov ov^ iv^i, zoiiTot f/,ocyoi'^oi$jMSiXiyiVja'z'xXXoi^oi; zoci ju,iTOchi$,
ov^ XXo^TTov; uzoffi }ta,i ^icczoo'Imv. cc/tiov 21 T^g (xh iv^iffiug, to \Xa.^tiTT0v
lu,iT^ov Tuv Iva^fAOVieov 2{/X(rT7if/,a.Teov, o-n^ "hiiffiv ovoy,aZ,ovffi' tovto u'Tokukos
Ik TY15 yifje,iTi^as uiff&yKrzous, za,) to ciXXo yivog to haofzoviov T^offOi'^rcoA.iffiv.

' Asclepiodotus, who was naturally of a particular disposition for music, was
not able to recover the lost Enharmonic genus, though he succeeded in dividing

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

149

* The object of what follows will be, first, to show how the Guitar
may (with some trouble indeed, which " the gods have attached to
everything good,") be made to produce correct harmony, or in the
language of musicians be a perfect instrument; — and afterwards, to
present the reasons for believing, that the lost Enharmonic aimed at
neither more nor less than this, and in fact meant nothing but playing
in harmony y or in other words in tune. How far the other modes of
division are from being in tune, will be best collected subsequently
from comparison.' — p» 1.

' If there was no evidence but the traces of correspondence with the
theory of the ancients which have been remarked from time to time in
the course of what has preceded, the inference would be very strong, in
favour of the identity of design. But the ancients have not left the
question in this condition ; for, however far they may have been from
being successful in the execution, their object is found stated in lan-
guage which it is impossible to mistake. Thus it is distinctly said by
Aristides Quintilianus, that " the Enharmonic is so called, from its
being taken in the perfect intervals of whatever is the subject of the
harmony*." i^nd again, that " the Enharmonic is the more correct j."
And in another place, he speaks of the Enharmonic which is uniform
and suffers no variation J." And they even go so far as to call the
Enharmonic by the name of Harmony ; which with them means
simply being in tune. Thus Aristides Quintihanus says, ^' the name
of Harmony is given to the genus which abounds with the smallest
intervals ; from their making harmony with one another And
'^The genera," saith Euclid, " are three ; Diatonic, Chromatic, and
i/armowy||."

' How far the ancients were successful in the attainment of their
object, is another and a different question ; and the truth seems to be
that they attained it very imperfectly, which is the probable cause of
its having been ultimately abandoned. But there appears to be no
reasonable doubt of what their object was ; or that the perplexity
which has existed upon the nature of their Enharmonic, has arisen
from confounding compound intervals with simple ones, — from such a

and executing the two other genera, the one called the Chromatic, and the
Diatonic. But the Enharmonic he did not iind out j though, by his own ac-
count, he shifted and transposed moveable frets to the number of not less than
220. And the reason of his not finding it, was that the smallest of the Enhar-
monic intervals, which is called the diesis, was lost from our perception, and
the rest of the Enharmonic genus was lost along with it.' — Photii Bihliotheca.
Sect. 242. p. 1051. Edit. Berthelin. Rothomag. 1653.

ntT&cti. — Aristides Quintilianus de Musicd, Lib. II. p. 111. Meibomius.

^ f * AK^i^iffTi^Qv Ti TO Im^fAoviov. — Id, Lib, I. p. 19.

' J To f/Xv Ivx^f^ovtov, a.'TrXom rs ov h,ou u,<7ro(,^U. — Id, Lib, III. p, 134.

* ^ ^A^fjcQvioe, fjtXv ovv aot.'kiircci ro roTg f^ciK^oroirois ^XBov(ic(Tc6v "hiCAffrrifAa.ffiv,
a'ffo roZ ffuvyipf^off^at. — Id, Lib, I. p, 18.

* II Tivn ^6 r^i'ccj ^ioirovov, Xi^i^'^-* ^^f^^^^^'^' — Euclid, Introd,

Harmon, p, 3. Meibomius.

150

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

mistake, in shorty as would be fallen into by any person who should
imagine that the various distances marked on the finger-board of the
Enharmonic Guitar, proceeded from a desire to make strange inter-
vals with hard names in the same movement or key, instead of
perceiving that they were only the places where the ordinary divisions
of the Canon fell at different times, by virtue of beginning at different
points in consequence of changes of key. Their object was to produce
correct harmony, or what they supposed to be such, by the application
of a uniform and unvarying rule in all cases. Which is in no degree
incompatible with the fact, that their knowledge of what this rule
ought to be in any one case, was exceedingly imperfect. All that is
proved by it is, that they conceived the idea of the secondary discovery,
before they had perfected the first.'

' One difficulty remains ; which is, how the ancients applied either
Diatonic, Chromatic, or Enharmonic, to such instruments as they
appear to have possessed. It would be solved at once, if it might be
assumed that the lyre had a finger-board behind the strings, which
had escaped representation upon ancient monuments. But what
seems decidedly opposed to this, is that Ptolemy, who lived a century
after the commencement of the Christian sera, is found describing the
attempt of some musicians of his time to perform tunes on a Mono-
chord in the manner of the modern guitar, as an unsuccessful experi-
ment * ; a statement inconsistent with the supposition that the lyre
had been always played on in thp same manner. It is at the same
time evident, from the nomenclature of their notes, that the ancients
derived their notions of the various sounds, from a string stopped in
different places as done upon a Monochord or a Guitar. The only con-
clusion therefore that seems consistent with facts, is that they formed
their theory of musical notes upon a Monochord, and then trans-
ferred them to the lyre, as might be done in the present day to a harp
or a pianoforte. It is true that the lyre of Mercury with three strings,
must have made as limited an accompaniment as the flute with three
holes used in playing the Pipe and Tabor. But the number of strings
appears quickly to have been increased ; and to have been ultimately
carried by Epigonusto forty.'

• The non-employment of instruments with necks does not seem
to have been caused by ignorance of the principle. For instruments
of the guitar kind with necks, are found represented in the tombs at
Thebes, on the Egyptian obelisk at Rome, and in various other re-
mains of remote antiquity ; and what was known in Egypt, must have
been conveyed, along with other knowledges, to Greece and Rome.
The inference therefore seems to be. that instruments with a string
for each note were older still ; and that they held their ground after
the other kind was known to exist, in the same manner as the harp
and pianoforte have done in modern times.' — p, 21.

A canon of criticism which either exists or ought to do, on
such remains as those of the ancient music, is that whatever is
intelligible, ought not to be neutralized by what is not. There

* Claudii Ptolemaei Harmonicorum Lib. II. cap. 12, 13.

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

151

has clearly been a great deal of pouring out of one bottle into
another ; and much writing of what the writers did not take
the trouble to understand, or at all events consigned their
understanding to memorials that have not come down to the
present times. No argument, therefore, should be drawn
from the impossibility of bringing all that the ancients have
written, within the pale of comprehension. It is enough to
attend to what is decipherable in the manuscript ; without en-
'tangling it with what is not.

There remains only the attempt, as formerly intimated, to
throw further light on the connexion between sim.plicity of
proportions and harmony. On which it is much easier to show,
that a great deal is still to be discovered, than to arrive at any
very satiUfactory conclusions.

^ But it is possible to go somewhat further with the pursuit of the
cause. Let three strings of the kind used for the sixth or thickest
string, be put on the guitar and tuned in unison, and the rest re-
moved. On striking either of the outer strings separately with a
certain force, the middle one will vibrate ; and on striking them both
at once with the same force as before, the agitation of the middle
string will be increased. And this will occur, v/hatever may be the
relative positions of the three strings ; and it makes no difference in the
result, whether the vibrations of the two outer strings take place
towards the same parts at the same instant of time, — or in the manner
directly the contrary, as will be the consequence of plucking the two
strings inwards or towards the middle string, — or in any other of the
possible ways. Which is evidence, that there is a concurrence
in the effects of the vibrations of the two outer strings upon the
middle one, these vibrations in reality exciting one augmented oscil-
lation of the air, and not two oscillations ; and that it equally takes
place in whatever manner the pulsations from the vibrations may
appear to cross and strike against each other/ — p. 3.

The inference here pointed at, is a remarkable one ; being
no other than that two strings which vibrate with the same
velocity, equally assist each other in forming one augmented
oscillation of the airj whether their contemporaneous move-
ments happen to be in the same direction, or in the directly
contrary or any other. That an accumulated effect should be
produced when the movements are in the same direction, is
easy to conceive ; but the other has the air of a paradox. Na-
ture, however, is not without similar paradoxes, which vanish
on examination ; the most notable of which, to compare small
things to great, will occur to the mathematician as presented
by the conjoint action of the moon and sun in producing a
spring tide at full moon, when cursory examiners are unani^
inous in declaring there ought to be a neap.

152

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

' If the middle string is an Octave above the two others, the same
results will ensue, only weaker in degree. And if the middle string
is a Fifth or a Fourth instead of an Octave, its vibrations will be
too weak to be distinguished by the eye ; but if the outer strings are
struck strongly, and suddenly stopped by the application of the
fingers, the middle string will be heard distinctly afterwards, which
is proof that it vibrates. The inference from which appears to be,
that in these cases also, the effects of the oscillations of air on the
middle string have a tendency to accumulate.'

^ The way in which these phaenomena take place, seems to be ex-
plicable on the principle of the air's perfect elasticity; the examination
of which is transferred to the Appendix.' — ip, 3.

Such a phsenomenon can only be accounted for on the suppo-
sition that it is a consequence of the paradoxical principle arising
out of the air s elasticity ; for it appears certain that in a swing
acted on by impulses whose periods bore the proportion of 3 to 2
to its own periods of oscillation, motion would never accumulate,
but be destroyed as fast as any tendency to it should be created.

Since then there is a principle which causes a string to
communicate motion to its Fifth, the only way in which their
conjoint oscillations can well be supposed to take place, is, as
afterwards stated, that they are analogous to the oscillations of
a smaller pendulum attached to a greater. And if so, it is
not difficult to imagine, that the elfect of the paradoxical prin-
ciple arising out of the air's elasticity, may extend to causing
conjoint oscillations to take place of the same kind, in whatever
manner the two strings may be struck. It would be merely an
extension of the similar effect proved by experiment to be pro-
duced in the case of unisons. But if the conjoint oscillations
are of this nature, there must be a series of concurrences be-
tween the oscillations of the two strings, the frequency of which
will be determined by the qualities of the numbers which ex-
press the proportion of the oscillations made by each respectively
in a given time.

* The frequency of the concurrences is equal to the frequency with
which the successive coincidences would take place among the vibra-
tions themselves, if the two strings should happen to vibrate in such
a manner that some two of their vibrations coincided in point of time.
And as this latter supposition (though confessedly an arbitrary one)
affords the most tangible object of the two, it may be usefully employed
as a way of measuring what actually takes place. By resorting to this
standard, it is plain that the comparative frequency of the concurrences,
in the different cases in succession, is the greatest that numbers will
admit of ; and the greater the comparative frequency in the different
combinations respectively, the more perfect is found to be the combi-
nation. For the most perfect of all combinations is the Unison ; where, in
the supposed case resorted to as a measure, every vibration of one string

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

153

would coincide with every vibration of the othei^ — which is the greatest
degree of frequency possible. The next in perfection is the Octave;
where every vibration of one string would coincide with every alter-
nate vibration of the other, — which is the next highest degree of fre-
quency that heart can imagine, or the nature of things admit. The
next is the Fifth ; where every second vibration of one string would
coincide with every third of the other. And so on. It is reasonable
therefore to conclude, that the frequency of the concurrences de-
scribed, (of which frequency the imaginable, or possible, coincidences
of the vibrations are employed as a measure), is^the way by which
simplicity of proportion produces harmony. But whether this is
considered as established or not, there is nothing to counteract the
evidence, that the simplicity of the proportions is in some way or other
the cause.' — jt?. 3.

That is to say, there is possibly no such thing as coincidence
of vibrations (unless by pure accident, and then without any
peculiar consequences) ; but there is a series of concurrences
in the effects of the vibrations in producing oscillations of a
certain kind in the air, and this equally takes place whether
the vibrations of the two strings happen to be ever actually
coincident or start in the same direction at the same instant, or
not. And this coincidence in the effects, is of exactly the same
frequency as the coincidence that would take place in the
vibrations supposing them to begin by starting together as
has been the common supposition ; and therefore this last may
continue to be taken and used as a convenient measure of the
other.

The same subject is pursued in the Appendix.

* The motion of a vibrating string is plainly analogous to that of
a pendulum or swing; the force which operates on the string to bring
it back to the situation in which it will be finally quiescent, being
governed by the same law as the force which operates on the pendu-
lum, — viz. that, for small distances, it varies as the distance from the
point of rest. Each vibration of the string therefore, like one of the
pendulum, is in reality made with a velocity that is accelerated in
approaching to the point where quiescence finally takes place, and
retarded in removing from it. And the number of vibrations in a
given time (the spaces moved through in all cases being supposed
small) are the same whether the space moved through by them is
greater or less, — or in other words, whether the string is struck forcibly
or gently

^ When the string is moving outwards or from the point of final
rest, it manifestly drives a number of particles of air before it in the

* The analogy between a string and a pendulum only holds good while the
spaces moved through are altogether very small. If the spaces are made great,
the pendulum is retarded and the string- quickened; the perturbations in the
forces being from different causes, and of contrary kinds.

154

Enharmonic of the Ancients,

direction of its motion ; and these again drive other particles before
them, an increase of density at the same time taking place in conse-
quence of the elastic particles being crowded upon each other. But
since the particles of an elastic fluid act equally upon each other in all
directions^ a movement of the air takes place not only in the direction
in which the string happens to be moving, but in every lateral direc-
tion also, or what may be termed excentrically ; — which is the reason
why the sound of a string is heard whether its vibrations take place in
the direction of the ear, or in any other. And when the string is
moving back again or towards the point of final rest, a contrary move-
ment of the air must take place, in consequence of the elastic pressure
by which the particles are driven into what would otherwise be a va-
cuum. The oscillatory motion thus communicated to the particles of
air, is proved by experiment to extend itself at the rate of 1 142 feet in
a second ; such being the velocity with which sound is found to travel.
And since the particles both receive themselves, and communicate to
others, a velocity accelerated with the acceleration of the motion of
the string, and the contrary, — it follows that every particle of air
within the influence of the vibrating string, performs a succession of
oscillations from and towards the string, — in each of which the velocity
of the motion is accelerated and retarded as in the motion of a pendu-
lum ; the duration or period of each oscillation being equal to that of
a vibration of the string.'

^ But though the oscillations of particles at different distances from
the string are made in equal periods, they are neither contemporane-
ous, nor of equal linear extent. That they are not contemporaneous,
is known from the time sound takes to travel. And that they decrease
in linear extent as the distance from the vibrating string increases, is
proved both from the necessity there is for the effects of the elastic
particles on one another decreasing as the number on which they act
is extended, — and from the fact that sound is diminished by distance.
The difference between a strong sound and a weak one, is that in one
case the particles of air oscillate through a great linear extent and
consequently with a great actual velocity, and in the other through a
small one ; though if the sounds are of the same musical pitch (as in
the instance of a strong tone and a weak one produced from the same
string of a violin by different pressures of the bow) the periods of os-
cillation are the same.'

^ Hence if the particles of air could be made visible, and the oscilla-
tions instead of being made at the rate of several hundreds in a second
were so slow that they could be judged of by the eye, — the particles
within a few feet of each other would appear to oscillate together, like
those of a tide that moves backwards and forwards in its channel.
But if these oscillations were compared with such as took place at a
distance considerably greater, it would be seen that the latter were
behind the others, in the same manner as upon comparison at consi-
derable distances it is perceived that the tide in the higher part of a
river does not run downwards till some time after it has begun to run
in that direction in the lower ; and also that the linear extent through
which the particles oscillated was diminished. Close to the string, the

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

155

linear extent of the oscillations would be equal to that of the vibrations
of the string ; and smaller as the distance was increased. And if the
particles of air were possessed of colour, so as to mark the variations
of density by the depth of the shade, — the colour at any given point
would be seen to come and go alternately, in periods equal to those of
the oscillatory motion; the intensity or positive magnitude of these
variations of colour being greatest close to the string, and smaller as
the distance was increased.'

* If the strength of the sound was increased (as may be done on
the string of a violin by increasing the pressure of the bow) — then, if
the particles of air are supposed visible as before, the linear extent of
the oscillations at all distances respectively would be seen to be in-
creased, as would also the variations in colour which mark the altera-
tions of density; but without producing any effect on the periods of
oscillation. And the contrary if the sound was diminished.'

' If it is true that there is a tympanum or drum in the ear, then
since there is air within the tympanum as well as without (as is said
to be painfully proved by its expansion in balloon ascents), there is no
difficulty in seeing how the tympanum must be made to vibrate, by
the alternate pressure of the air without and the elasticity of that
within, in periods equal to those of the vibrating string. And the
positive magnitude or violence of this agitation, will at any given
distance be in correspondence with the magnitude or linear extent of
the vibrations of the string ; and at different distances, will diminish
when the distance is increased. All of which seems competent enough
to be the means by which the sense of hearing, with its concomitant
peculiarities, is excited in the organ ; and may therefore be lawfully
assumed to be the way, till something better is known.'

* The experiment described in ^ 26 affords proof, that when two
strings in unison are sounded at the same time, the oscillations of air
derived from them, (on the supposition that they could be made the
objects of sense as before), would be seen to form one common set of
oscillations in the same periodic time as would proceed from either of
the strings separately, but more forcible, or of greater linear extent at
any given distance. The way in which this combination takes place,
seems explicable on the supposition of the perfect elasticity of the air*.
For in whatever manner an oscillation of air from one string may
meet and encounter the oscillations from the other, the particles of air
which are at any instant compressed and driven together with any
particular force in consequence, must react with a force augmented by
precisely the same quantity, when the opportunity arrives for expand-
ing. So that it is plainly possible for the result to be, to produce an

*' By perfect elasticity is only meant, that the particles of air, at every in-
stant and under all imag:inable circumstances, exert an expansive force equal to
the force with which they are actually compressed ; or in other words, that
their expansion is not retarded by anything like cohesion, as in the tardy ex-
pansion of a cushion. No disturbance therefore arises from the fact, that the
positive quantity of elastic force may be affected, by the disengagement of heat
or otherwise, during the condensation ; for the effects must be contrary and
equal in both directions.*

156

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

oscillation of greater linear extent, and in the same periodic time as
before. And the experiment appears to prove, that this is the result.'

* When one of the strings is an Octave or a Fifth to the other, it is
presumable that if the movements of the particles of air could be sub-
jected to ocular examination, they would be found analogous to the
movements in fixed space made by a small pendulum attached to a
greater one, as for instance to the bar of the pendulum of a clock j
and in which the respective lengths should be regulated so as to make
the number of vibrations in a given time in the proportion of 2 : 1 or

* If this explanation is the true one, it obviates the common argu-
ment brought against what is called the coincidence of pulsations. If
two strings of equal length, thickness, and tension, are placed at a
distance from each other and the ear is placed at some point between
them, they sound in unison. Now — it has been argued — if they sound
in unison because the pulsations from the two strings coincide at the
ear, — then on moving the ear nearer to one string and farther from
the other, they ought not to sound in unison ; because — say the objec-
tors — the pulsations which reached the ear together in the first situa-
tion, cannot do so in the other. The answer to which is, that the
inference depends on an incorrect assumption of what takes place ;
the fact being, that the ear- receives but one set of oscillations from
both strings, and receives it with equal regularity in every situation.'

* The same application of the principle of the air's perfect elasticity,
is sufficient to account for the fact, that when two strings vibrate in
unison, the pulsations of air from one, do not check or interfere with
the vibrations of the other, but on the contrary promote them ; and
this whether the vibrations have the appearance of obeying the im-
pulse of the pulsations, or of being in any other direction, even the
directly contrary. That this is really the fact, is established by the
experiment on Harmonic sounds described in ^ 1.36 ; where the vibra-
tions of some part or parts of the longer string, take place in direct
opposition to the vibrations of some other of the parts, and yet both
are actuated by the pulsations from the shorter string. It is evidently
impossible that any set of pulsations can of themselves originate or
create a vibration in an opposite direction ; but it appears to be esta-
blished, that if from any other cause such a mode of vibration is once
initiated, the pulsations may promote and increase it, in the same man-
ner as if they were in the same direction instead of opposite.'

* The way in which an opposite motion may be initiated, seems
explicable on the principle by which an extended rope, on being
shaken in one part, vibrates by successive portions producing a tortu-
ous or snake-like motion ; which is evidently caused by the vis inertice
of the particles of the rope. In this manner a vibration commencing
in the first of the aliquot parts that is affected by the pulsations
from the other string, may be imagined to be attended by an opposite
vibration in the next ; which last, as soon as it occurs, is taken up and
encouraged by the effects of the pulsations, in the same manner as if
it had been in a different direction.' — p. 22.

A Note in the Additions during printing, seems also to

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

157

open a prospect of increasing the knowledge of the connexion
between causes and effects.

' It is well known that traces of division analogous to that of the
musical string, are discoverable in other natural phsenomena ; as for
instance the breadths of the prismatic colours, and the distances of the
planets (the last of which is probably what gave rise to the notion of
the " harmony of the spheres"). Instead of talking mystically of

the universe being formed by the principles of harmony," philoso-
phers will suspect the existence of some connexion with the succes-
sively greatest possible frequency of coincidences in the effects of
different sects of periodical impulses.' — p» 28.*

The Article cannot be better concluded than with the follow-
ing speculation of Huygens, extracted from an old Translation
of his " Kosmotheoros."

* It 's the same with musick as with geometry, it 's every where
immutably the same, and always will be so. For all harmony consists
in concord, and concord is all the world over fixt according to the
same invariable measure and proportion. So that in all nations the
difference and distance of notes is the same, whether they be in a
continual gradual progression, or the voice makes skips over one to
the next. Nay, very credible authors report, that there's a bird in
America, that can plainly sing in order six musical notes. Whence it
follows that the laws of musick are unchangeably fix'd by nature, and
therefore the same reason holds valid for their musick as we e'en now
proposed for their geometry. For why, supposing other nations and
creatures, endowed with sense and reason as we, should they not reap
the pleasures arising from these senses^ as we do P I don't know
what effect this argument, from the immutable nature of these arts,
may have upon the minds of others, I think it no inconsiderable or
contemptible one, but of as great strength as that which I made use
of to prove the Planetarians had the sense of seeing.'

* But if they take delight in harmony, 'tis twenty to one but that
they have invented musical instruments. For, if nothing else, they
could scarce help lighting upon some or other by chance ; the sound
of a tight string, the noise of the winds, or the whistling of reeds,

• Another observation is, that there are curious sequences or trains of num-
bers, among the recurring decimals in the Collective System. This would not
have been thought worth noticing, but for an impression that appearances of
the same kind have been noted lately in some scientihc work which cannot now
be recollected.

The measure on degree 15 of the Collective System, is the only one in which the
division has not been carried on till it ended either in no remainder or a recur-
ring decimal ; and it would go to twenty-seven figures before the decimal
recurs.

It is plain that in all possible cases of the kind in question, the division must
come to an end by the occurrence of either a recurring decimal or no remainder,
within a number of figures not greater than the number expressed by the
divisor. For the number of difi'erent remainders cannot be greater than this :
and the instant there occurs a remainder which has occurred before, a recur-
ring decimal arises.— ^dcZ^d in 1839.

158

Enharmonic of the Ancients.

might have given them the hint. From these small beginnings they,
perhaps, as well as we, have advanced by degrees to the use of the lute,
harp, fliite, and many stringed instruments. But altho the tones are
certain and determinate, j^et we find among different nations a quite
different manner and rule of singing; as formerly amongst the
Dorians, Phrygians, and Lydians ; and in our time among the
French, Italians, and Persians*.'

There seems as little doubt that there must be music in the
planets, as that the three angles of a triangle in the planets
must be equal to two right angles ; provided only the materials
exist for reducing it to act.

On the whole, there is in these investigations what ought to
rally the monochordists, and give heart of grace to those who
see in every new province added to the dominions of sound rea-
son, a pledge for the security and future increase of her aggre-
gate power. The two chief points ascertained appear to be,
first, that the theory of the Double Dissonances goes to doing
away v^ith difficulties as to what is correct harmony, and the
terrors of "the Wolf;" and secondly, that the rigid execution
of the divisions of correct harmony on all instruments, is at-
tainable to an almost unlimited extent of changes of key, by
the transfer (with little addition) of the rules required for the
divisions of the *' Temperament of Fifty- three."

Postscript.
From the Westminster Review for 1 July, 1832.

One of the authors of the musical articles in Rees's Encyclo-
psedia (Dr. Burney and Farey senior) says in the Article on
Temperament, " No experience has yet been brought to show
" that the human voice sings tempered notes ; not even when
" accompanied by tempered instruments. It seems to us, on the
" contrary, that an exercised voice, guided by a good ear, sings

true, even though accompanied by a mis-tuned instrument,
" as harpsichords most frequently are, especially in transposed
" keys."

If this is just, it explains the harmonious effect obtained
from human voices, as for instance in glee singing. And what
holds good of voices, is probably good to a certain extent of

* From a Translation of Huygens's KO2MO0EnPO2, entitled, ' The Celes-
tial Worlds Discovered; or, Conjectures concerning the Inhabitants,
Plants, and Productions of the World of Planets, written in Latin by Christi-
ANus HuYGENS, and inscribed to his brother, Constantine Huygens, late Secre-
tary to his Majesty, King William. London; printed for Timothy Chiide,
at the White Hart, at the west end of St. Paul's Churchyard, m. DC. xcviii.' —
TaJieifrom the Harmunicon for Sept. 1829.

French Commerce.

159

violins ; as being in the same manner under the direction of
the ear.

All this goes to prove, that there is such a thing as correct
harmony, and that it would be important to ascertain and cul-
tivate it*.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1832.

Art. XVI. — Rapport fait au mm de la Commission chargee d^examiner
leprojet de lot sur les Certales, par le Baron Charles Dvpin^
Depute de la Seine, Seance du 5 JMai^s 1832.

T^T'HEN two great nations, that used to shed each others'
blood like fighting-cocks for the benefit of the knaves that
governed them, have had the genius to find out the fraud of
their respective keepers and enter on a course of mutual good
instead of evil, it is probable there will be found a kind of
interlocking in the benefits which they may derive from the ex-
ample or the knowledge of each other. It is admitted, in the
teeth of the deception carried on upon this point by the inter-
ested, that in both the major and the minor morals of society, —
in all whereby the private conduct of the individual is to act
upon the happiness of the community, — the French people have
left their ancient enemies behind. But we of this side the
water take the liberty to think, that we are more advanced ia
the knowledge which relates to the effect of the public acts and
operations of one part of the community upon another ; — or at
all events in the practical diffusion of it, which is what makes
it available to public use.

In this view it is painful to perceive the leaders of a people
to whom this country owes so much, clinging to the beggarly
elements of gone-by darkness, and putting on the cast clothes of
English ignorance just when they will fit us here^no longer.

* The following extract from the work of a practical musician appears in
point.

* There are many degrees of false intonation: some singers are false to a
degree that admits of no mistake in their case ; but others have it so slight as to
be scarcely perceptible to the generality of auditors j bat still, even to those audi -
tors who could nottell that the voice was out of tune, the general effect does not
please. Those kind of singers will execute passages with the greatest skill, but
they have little or no eflfect. Why? Because in all their embellishments one
or more notes are not in perfect tune. In fact my readers may draw one certain
conclusion that wherever they hear a singer, who appears to have a good voice,
executes well, and seems to have every requisite to be a good singer, but who,
with every exertion, cannot arrive to be a decided favourite with the public, they
may be certain that in nine cases out of ten such singers labour under a slight
error of intonation, which though not sulBcient to be quite apparent, still always
prevents the singing from giving a perfectly agreeable sensation to the auditor.'
— Costa's Analytical Considerations on the Art of Singing, Extracted from the
Morning Chronicle of 7 Sept. ISdS.^Added in 1839.

160

French Commerce.

Who, but a desponding Tory, in England, would wail, for
example, over nature's mismanagement in respect of agricul-
ture, in such terms as follow ?

' Manufacturing industry, more fortunate in this respect than
agricultural, has the power of obtaining, in a time that shall be fixed
upon, the precise quantity and qnality of products it thinks necessary
for its speculations. But aj^jriculture, even when carried to most
perfection, having to struggle daily with climate, irregularities of
seasons and accidental unfavourable weather, can never foresee or
calculate the abundance or deficiency of its harvests, and their feeding
powers.'

^ Thus those kinds of produce which nations \_les peuples'] would
have the most interest in rendering invariable in their value, quan-
tities, and quality, are precisely those which the mysteries of nature
make impossible to compute beforehand, or to foresee in their future
stages, even the least remote.' — p. 2.

Does any mystery of nature conceal the fact, that different
countries have been created under such circumstances as make
it practically impossible, that a partial failure in the harvests
of one, should not be remediable by communication with the
others, if man, in the wisdom of his absurdity, could be per-
suaded not to stand by to prevent ? And is it not plain, that
the suffering to one country, would be balanced by a correspond-
ing profit to the other ; and thus, as nature presented the cup
of suffering and of profit to each by turns, the movement of the
great machine would be kept up with the least practicable
aggregate of human evil ?

Nothing is more common than for fallacies to start with pro-
fessions of zeal for the very contrary of what their end is to
promote. In England at least, they almost always do so. In
this view, what follows is to be looked on with a suspicious eye.

^ In the same spirit of selfishness, the interest of agriculture was
continually represented as opposed to that of manufactures, and the
interest of the workshops to that of commerce. Laws were called for,
which were to serve one of these interests at the expense of the others.
It was gravely affirmed that manufactures could only become rich at
the expense of agriculture, and agriculture at the expense of the work-
shops. It was declared that land is never well cultivated but where
manufactures are kept away, and that cultivation decays in places
where manufactures flourish.' — p. 5.

This is all very good, if it is meant to be what it seems. But
is it ? In England such a flourish generally ends in an endea-
vour to persuade the consumers, that when a particular set of
traders robs them by Act of Parliament, they have a community
of interest in the fact. The trick is in transferring what would
be true under a just state of things, to an unjust. All men

French Commerce,

161

are interested in the success of one another ; therefore rejoice
in the prosperity of your brother whose hand is in your pocket.

The Commission is very dark, A Committee of the Enghsh
Lords or Commons might try to prop up the obsolete principle
of the Navigation Law in practice ; but none would be found
so devoid of tact as to brave public opinion by a sentence like
the following.

' The same Act secured a preference in the scale of import duties to
grain brought in English vessels, over that in foreign bottoms ; a
measure full of reason and patriotism^ which was wisely renewed after
the general peace.' — p. 9.

Assuredly no English Committee would fall into the niaiserie
of saying this in words, however much the members in their
hearts might lean to the system of setting men to create wealth
by robbing one another. It is not that the sounds of" powerful
navy," wooden walls," " country's glory," have lost their force
in England, any more than the corresponding sounds in France.
But Englishmen by dint of pains and patience, have had the
knowledge forced upon them to a great extent, that all that is
paid to an English ship-jobber for the sake of bringing goods
in his dear ship instead of the foreigner's cheap one, is taken
first from the British trader of some kind with whom the con-
sumer would have spent the difference if it had been left with
him, and once more from the consumer besides ; and that this,
instead of being the way to make a nation rich and powerful
by sea or land, is the way to make it poor and contemptible
everywhere. The jobbers do their best to keep the secret ;
but the people knows too much, and the day for the flourishing
of that kind of public mischief is gone by in England.

What is true of shipping or corn, the public knows to be
equally true of everything else ; and therefore it may be said
to have penetrated the complicated fraud, which took the sum
of the public losses and called it the public gain.

It is hard upon the French people to have the absurdities of
Enc^land thrust down their throats as good examples ; and it is
hard upon both countries, that what may be called " the shame-
ful parts" of one, should be the objects selected for the contem-
plation of the other. Let the French copy English wisdom,
English virtue, if their rulers think they can benefit by the imi-
tation ; but let them not be called upon to follow whar Eng-
lishmen despise and ridicule, and array themselves in theworn-
out fool's-caps of our English Punchinelloes.

When Adam Smith wrote his immortal work on the Wealth
of Nations," could he ever dream of seeing such a use made of
it as is next proposed to the French Chamber ?

* When Adam Smith wrote his immortal work on the Wealth of

VOL. II. L

162

French Commerce,

Nations, he proved victoriously that nations where the arts are far ad-
vanced may pay much higher wages to the labourer, and yet, through
the division of labour and the employment of improved tools, machines,
and instruments, may manufacture at a much lower price than ignorant
and poor nations, anjong whom the wages of labour are nevertheless
very low.'

^ At the same time he saw, that the most advanced nations have not
the same advantage in respect of the produce of agriculture ; he was
decidedly of opinion that the industrious and rich nations, where the
payment of labour is high, have very little power to compete, in the
cheapness of agricultural produce, with poor and merely agricultural
nations.'

^f the author of the Wealth of Nations" had lived in our times—'
he would never have come to the conclusion that has been laid
before the French Deputies. The French have no right to pro-
duce our Adam Smith to make a fool of him ; or, at all events,
no claim to do it v^^ithout a protest against the folly.

If the author of the "Wealth of Nations" had lived in our
times —

^ he would have allowed jthat a series of circumstances which have
been long in train, made it impossible for countries far advanced,
like France and England, to raise corn at the same price as some
other nations, like the Poles and Russians, among whom &c. &c.' —
p. 12.

He would have allowed all this, but he would not have ar-
rived at the babyish inference contained in the report of the
French Committee, but the directly contrary, I cannot make
shoes for my horse for less than three times the expense of
bringing them from the commune across the river. Tf the
author of the Wealth of Nations had lived in our times," infers
the French Committee, he would have advised the making a
law to prevent the possibility of a man's yielding to the tempta-
tion of buying the cheap shoes. " Buy the cheap shoes," would
have been Adam Smith's advice, "and laugh at the simpletons
who tell you that the impossibility of getting the shoes cheap
on your own side the water, is anything but the reason why
you should send for them to the other."

The French Committee is plainly beset with the delusion,
that traders exist for the purpose of being kept at the commu-
nity's expense, and not of supplying the community with what
the community may want. If it is established that a certain
trade is not wanted, or is wanted to a diminished extent in con-
sequence of the discovery of cheaper markets, the inference of
the Committee is, that the community should be cut off from
those cheaper markets, as the means of forcing it to maintain
the traders it does not want. Their inference is, that in order

French Commerce.

163

to give a thousand francs to the trader that is not wanted, a
thousand francs must be cut off from what would be expended
on some other French trader if the consumer were left to expend
his income at the best market, and a thousand at the same time
lost by the French consumer besides. To our enemies be such
statesmanship ; it is because the French are not our enemies,
that it is grievous to behold them under the direction of such
folly.

^ Here then, in four years, is the exorbitant sum of 185,563,073
francs paid by France to foreign agriculture for corn. This sum,
which represents the value of 800,000 tons of grain, is as much as, for
four years, would keep 750,000 persons.' — p. 33.

This must be what David meant by the ** madness of the
people." A nation removed from us by a narrow channel, which
the insanity might cross as easily as the cholera, has paid 1 85
millions of francs for corn, for no earthly reason but because it
got 800 thousand tons of it at half the price it could have got it
in any other way. The French are gone deranged, and the
Chamber of Deputies more than hints so. Here was the food
of 750 thousand persons all got at half price, to the infinite loss
and damage of — the Chamber of Deputies. These men have
corn to sell. They have musty victual, that wants eating. No
other earthly reason can bring their conduct within the scope
of credibility.

Alas, will the time ever come, when government shall cease
to be the job of jobs, the refugium peccatorum for all stray
follies and decayed unreasonablenesses which could not show
their faces for an hour if applied to the private concerns of life ?
Qudm pared sapientid regitur mundus, may be learnt in other
countries than w'here the maxim was first volunteered.

But the Committee decrees itself an ovation, for putting down
the vague generalities of political economy." Suspect every
man, that talks of putting down vague generalities. They are
always people to whom it is odious to think, that two and two
should everlastingly make four. Be firmly persuaded, that the
hatred of vague generalities, means nothing but the introduction
of some private fallacy. All nature is one great generality. The
smallest of all reasoners, are those who demand a distinct law
for every separate case, and expect men to gulp down their in-
sulated blunders, in defiance of what the common experience
of mankind informs them must be the general rule.

^ Here is the place for refuting a strange error committed by some
people, who give themselves up blindly to the abstract generalities of
political economy. What harm is there, they say, in going to the
foreigner for any quantity of agricultural produce ? Instead of its
being a subject of regret to France, she ought to be glad of it ) for
L 2

164

French Commerce,

beyond doubt the foreigner will increase his purchases of French pro-
duce, when France increases her purchases of the foreign. And they
demonstrate the necessity, the infalhbility, of this compensation, by
reasonings of admirable subtlety. By this account, you see, our
national manufactures should be better off, and export more of their
productions, in proportion as our agriculture gave its produce in less
quantity, and the agriculture of other nations drove out our own to its
more complete destruction.' — p. 34.

This is meant to \>q triumphant ; especially when backed by
the assertion that in the three years of 1825, 1826, and 1827,
which were great corn years, the amount of French manufac-
tures exported was greater by 11 millions of francs (about
450,000/.) than in 1828, 1829, and 1830, which were bad corn
years, and in which 134 millions of francs (upwards of five
millions sterling) were paid to foreigners for corn.

Admitting these data without examination, they prove
nothing but that the Committee has made a huge blunder, such
as any set of men committing out of office would never hold up
their heads again as men of reputation for business-like discre-
tion. The Committee wants to prove, that it is a bad thing for
French industry that corn should be bought from foreigners;
and by way of proving it, what does it advance? Not that the
sales of French industry were less upon the whole than they
would have been if the purchases of foreign corn had been pro-
hibited ; — which is the only thing that could have proved their
point. But that the sales to the foreigner were less, than they
would have been if the purchases from the foreigner had been
restrained by law. Will the Committee assist its hearers with
its opinion, whether the corn procured from foreigners was got
for nothing; — if it w^as not, in what manner it was paid for,
unless in French manufactures or else in imported foreign pro-
ducts, bullion or coins included, which must themselves be
bought by the exchange of French manufactures somewhere
else ; — and finally, by what process known to human reason it
can be shown, how when a new trade was created which must
be paid for in French exports either directly or circuitously, the
result should be that the demand for French exports should be
less than before, — unless the effect should have been produced
by foreign and unconnected causes, which swallow^ed up not only
the natural tendency to the increase of exports, but eleven
millions more ?

If the French agriculturists had less to spend in consequence,
it is plain that somebody else, viz. the consumers, must have
had more ; and if the consumers did not go to precisely the
same kind of shops that the agriculturists would, there might
be a loss to this particular kind of shops, but it is equally clear

French Commerce.

165

there must have been a gain to some other. The farming
labourer might spend less in woollens, but the Parisian labourer
who ate cheap bread spent more in wine. And why is a Parisian
labourer to go without his wine, with no earthly result but that
a woollen manufacturer shall make a profit instead of a wine-
grower ? Depend on it, sense and reason have the same laws
in all latitudes. If a man was innocently to relate, that he had
been in a place where the longer he walked in the direction of
a given point, the farther he was off, he would only be an object
of ridicule. This very thing happened though to the Polar tra-
vellers ; but they took care to let out the secret that an accidental
shift of the ice carried them back two miles for every one they
moved upon its surface, and did not come home claiming the
merit of a discovery like that of the French Committee.

But tbe French Committee do worse than this. They put
down opposition with " les celebres ho7nmes d etat, les Canning,
les Liverpool, les Robinson, les Grant, et surtout Huskisson,"
whom they describe as reconnoissant que 60 schellings est le
prix necessaire du qualifier de fromenty Do they not know,
that these were all men struggling between half knowledge, and
the fear of offending dishonest interests from whose dominion
the public mind had only begun to conceive the possibility of
disfranchisement? Truly the Dii minores of England make a
humbling spectacle, as held forth by the men of the juste milieu
for the adoration of the great nation.

Near the end of their Report, the Committee undertake *' to
proclaim another principle," which they say was admirably
demonstrated by the author of the Wealth of Nations.

* A nation is in a declining state when^ in consequence of a suc-
cession of suffering in some important branch of the national wealth,
agriculture, for example, having received a blow, reacts on the rest^
of the social state ; the prices of every thing give way under the
weight of the general distress^, and the reward of labour falls to less .
and less.'

' On the other hand, when the society prospers, the consequence is
a natural and moderate progression in the remunerative price of every
kind of industry, and at the same time a progress at least of equal
magnitude in the price of labour, which represents the well-being of
the labourer, or in other words, of the mass of the people.' — ^p. 91.

If a wager had been depending on stating what Adam Smith
did not say, it could not have been won more successfully than
by this. The passage alluded to, is surmised to be the fol-
lowing.

* It is in the progressive state, while the society is advancing to the
further acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full comple-
ment of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great

166

Programme to <^c.

body of the people, seems to be the happiest and most comfortable.
It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the declining state. The
progressive state is in reality the cheerful and the hearty state to all
the different orders of the society. The stationary is dull ; the declin-
ing melancholy.' — Wealth of NaiiGm. Book I. Ch. 8.

In this there is not a word about agriculture having received
a blow, and reacting on the rest of the social state ; all this is
pure imagination. What the author was aiming at, was in fact
something virtually opposite to the use here attempted to be
made of it. The spirit of his proposition is, that in a new
country, where the resources of the soil are yet undrawn upon,
wages are high, and the state of the population at large is com-
fortable. When the attainable produce can no longer be in-
creased, the condition of the community is dull ; and if it begins
to retrograde, miserable.

There is no use in complaining of ignorance on these points.
Knowledge on such subjects must proceed upwards and not
downwards. It never came from a Chamber of Deputies
to the people ; all Chambers talk nonsense for twenty years
after the people have begun to laugh at it. It is when the
middling and working classes become as well acquainted with
their interests in large masses as they are in small, — that there
will be an end of impositions like persuading them it is for the
public interest to eat dear corn, and import in dear ships. The
monopolists in France call this, an English attempt to put down
French production ; and in England it used to be called French
philosophy. The wine-growers, in France, are the men who
ought especially to look to it. There is not an English yeoman
or good shop-keeper that ought not to drink his pint of claret
daily if he likes it, if the commerce between the two countries
was free : but the Tories step in, and say we shall drink swipes
and blackstrap. There is no help for it. Nations, like men,
will come to years of discretion in time ; and till they do, they
must suffer.

Programme to the Westminster Review for 1 July, 1832.
Bentham is dead. As the Arabs say of their great men,
^,fls^t " inhddhara he is sent for to The Presence. The
" second" teacher of The Greatest Happiness, as he a few years
ago was called, is gone to join "the First;" and it is not
small matters of theology, that will prevent him from being
greeted as good and faithful servant.

To lament for a man who died covered with honour, not
with honours, at more than the natural term of human life, —

Dr. Chalmers 07i Political Economy,

167

would be unreasonable as useless. Let us rather rejoice, that
his active labours were prolonged for nearly sixty years, and
that with a portion of them we have been contemporary.

His writings have been a leading instrument,— it would per-
haps be no error to say the leading instrument, — in effecting
the change of opinions at home and on the Continent, which
is heaving up the crust of the old world, like the imprisoned
waters of the geologists. They have substituted a new rule,
a new measure ; they have caused the materials of human society
to gravitate towards another centre of attraction than before.

Born 15 February, 1748, n. s., in Aldgate, London. Died
6 June, 1832. His first published work was his " Fragment
on Government," in 1776 ; his last, the " Parliamentary Can-
didate's proposed Declaration of Principles,'' in 1831. His
body, according to directions prepared by him, was applied to
the service of humanity by being made the subject of anato-
mical illustration ; a disposition, against which, at that period,
there existed many prejudices among the less instructed por-
tions of his countrymen.

QUALIS AB INCEPTO.

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1832.

Art. I. — On Political Economy ^ in connexion with the Moral State and
Moral Prospects of Society, By Tiiomas Chalmers, D.D. Pro-
fessor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. — Glasgow ;
CoUins. London; Whittaker & Co'. Hamilton & Co. Simpkin
and Marshall. 1832. 8vo. pp. 566.

^HE proper business of every man and every hour, is to
know as much as he can of political economy. Not but it
may also be desirable that he should learn something of arith-
metic and book-keeping by double entry, be acquainted with
the properties of the lever and inclined plane, and have a por-
tion of information touching the nature of the planetary motions
and the divisions of the surface of the terraqueous globe. But
all these acquirements may only render him a useful slave ;
and the other is the education which must enable him to keep
the benefit of his labours for himself. It has indeed long been
defined to be the science of preventiiig our betters from de-
frauding us ; which is sufficient to account for its being eagerly
pursued on one hand, and vilified on the other.

In such a state of things, great are the obligations of society
to any individual, who possessing character unimpeachable for
intelligence and virtue, will descend as a mediator between
contlicting parties, and perform the office of the alkali that

168 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

brings the oil and water of the community into combination for
the removal of the public stains. No office more honourable
has ever been exercised by learning and experience : even the
legislation of the poet in the golden age of the Saint-Simonians,
must yield to it in the double ratio of vigour and extent of
influence. And to arbitration of this kind must every public
question come. Men in these days cannot contend forever;
the times are gone by with the feuflal system, when the meat
and drink of mankind was quarrelling. Each side makes out
the stoutest case it can ; and at last comes the arbitrator, and
strikes the balance between both. There may not be any de-
fined power to enforce acquiescence in his decisions ; but there
is a virtual energy in the combined exercise of reason and au-
thority, which induces such a quantity of adhesion on the part
of the great masses of the public, as makes subsequent resist-
ance unavailing. It may not settle all truth for ever and for
ever ; but it may make a great step towards the settling of so
much truth, as shall be brilliantly useful to the present and
succeeding generations.

Great outcry is made against theories and theorists ; and
why should there not, if the theories are wrong ? Theory means
seeing the consequences of one thing in another thing. There
was once an outcry against the theory of arithmetic ; and the
last place where it made its stand, was probably the quarter-
deck. Yet even there it was put down at last, by the palpable
proof which was exhibited, that offensive as it might be to the
prejudices of the ancient mariners, the casters of figures really
knew something about the matter, and could prophesy of the
land's whereabout, when nobody else could tell whether it lay
to the right hand or the left. But this result depended on the
correctness of their assumptions and the accuracy of their
inferences. Whatever therefore increases the fidelity of either,
must in all analogous cases be an instrument of success.

Highly important in this view, is the sifting and re-examina-
tion given by the author in his First Chapter, to what has been
assumed by economists as the histoire raisonnee of the com-
mencement and early progress of culture and population. No
man can doubt that the early proprietors of a vacant territory
will fall, to the best of their instinct, on the superior qualities
of soils and situations first. But it by no means follows that
this shall be their period of ease and pleasantry ; on the con-
trary the odds are, that this, as the Scottish tongue expresses
it, \?>just the season of their greatest difficulties, and that the
fatness of the fattest of the new found land is barely sufficient
to keep the bodies and souls of the adventurers together for
more auspicious times. And when increase of mouths brings

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

169

cultivators to land that had been considered secondary to the
other, it as little follows, that the cultivators of this secondary
land shall not on the whole be in greater ease and comfort than
were the cultivators of the first at the same comparative epoch
of its cultivation. The fathers of New England may have oc-
cupied the intrinsically best land in 1632 ; but it does not fol-
low that agricultural improvement may not be a safer and
better business there in 1832, than it was to the fathers of New
England.

But there is another way in which the descent to inferior
land may be effected, without any diminution in the comfort of
the labouring portion of the community.

^ Cultivation may be extended by an improvement in manufac-
turings as well as in agricultural labour. It may be conceived, of
the land last entered, that in return for a certain quantity of labour,
it yields the subsistence of a hundred families — and that the land
next inferior to it cannot be profitably cultivated, because in return
for the same labour, it yields the subsistence of only ninety families.
Now, overlooking for the present, the element of profit, one might
conceive these hundred families to be made up of seventy belonging
to the agricultural, and of thirty belunjjjing to the secondary class. —
it beinjj^ the employment of tbe latter to prepare, for the whole hun-
dred, the second necessaries of life. It matters not whether there be
such an improvement in agricultural labour, that sixty can do the
work of seventy, or such an improvement in manufacturing labour,
that twenty can do the work of thirty. In either way, ninety la-
bourers can do as much as a hundred did before ; and whereas, for-
merly, land behoved to return for their labour the subsistence of a
hundrtd families, ere it could be taken in, it may now be taken in,
though of such inferior qualitj^, as to nturn the subsistence of but
ninety families. By the former improvement, the agricultural la-
bourers necessary, for a given effect, became fewer than before,' — by
the latter improvement, though still as numerous, they would require
the services of fewer secondaries than before. It is thus that a step
of improvement in manufactures alone, can give rise to an onward
step of extension in agriculture — and just because a method has been
devised for the fabrication of as many yards of cloth, by fewer hands,
soils of poorer out-field,'than any that had yet been reached, may now
be profitably entered upon. An improvement in the form of the
stocking-machine, may, as well as an improvement in the form of the
plough, bring many an else unreclaimed acre witbin the reach of cul-
tivation.' — p. 9.

It will here inevitably be asked, what is to become of the
ten labourers, whether of the secondary or agricultural class,
who are thus supposed to be dispensed with and thrown out of
a claim for food. To which nature, who is marvellously con-
cinnous in her operations, has provided the ready answer, that
they must improve manufactures, with the view of obtaining

170

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy*

from the class of landed gentlemen whom the same progress of
things will have begun to call into existence on the superior
soils, a portion of the produce which will be ready to be dis-
posed of for luxuries or comforts a little above the common. If
huckaback was before woven for the farmer s tablecloths, they
must begin to weave diaper for the squire's ; and if they can-
not, they and the class to which they belong will live seven on
the allowance of six, or as the case may be, till somebody or
other will relieve the mess at large by taking to the weaving.
If it should be urged, that all the squire has, will be consumed
in adding to the population of his class ; the answer is, that he
will make a drawback for the diaper. The squires will come
to some kind of middle term ; they will increase and multiply
after their heart's imaginations, but one part of their imagi-
nations will be after tablecloths, or whatever else may be the
luxuries open to their station, and they will secure these, though
at the expense of some final diminution of the squire-descended
population.

* It is thus that, by a more strenuous industry, and a more effective
machinery together, the poorer soils may, to a certain extent, be
forced to yield an equal, or, perhaps, a more liberal subsistence to the
labourer, than at earlier stages in the process of cultivation. Yet it
must be quite evident that, whether in single countries, or in the
whole world, it is a process which cannot go on indefinitely. The time
may be indefinitely distant, and indeed may never come, when the
absolute and impassable barrier shall at hngth be arrived at. But to
be satisfied that there is such a barrier, one has only to look to the
extent and quality of the land in any region of the earth. By labour
we might grind even the naked rock into an arable soil, — but a soil
thus formed never would return the expense of food bestowed upon
the labourers. In every country there is an upland or outfield ter-
ritory, which will always bid defiance to agriculture. And even
though it were not so — though to its last acre it possessed a uniform
richness — though the plough might be carried over the whole of the
mighty continent, and should find an obstacle no where but at the
margin of the sea ; yet, as sure as that every country has its limit,
and every continent its shore, we must acquiesce in it as one of the
stern necessities of our condition, that the earth we tread upon, can
only be made to yield a limited produce, and so to sustain a limited
population.'

' It seems very generally admitted, that should it ever come to
this, the population, brought to a stand in respect of numbers, must
either have to encounter great positive distress, or must anticipate
this distress by a preventive regimen. In the midst of all the minuter
criticisms to which the doctrine has been exposed, the great historical
fact remains unshaken — that, let the means of subsistence be increased
however largely and suddenly, this is sure to be followed by a corre-
sponding increase of population. Every state and country in the

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy, 171

world bears evidence to this truth — whether in the steady augmen-
tations of Europe, or in the gigantic strides that are now makii.g in
the popidation of America. The invariable connection, as of ante-
cedent and consequent, between a great extent* of fertile and unoc-
cupied land, and a great multiplication of families, wheu once it is
entered upon, is too palpable to be obscured by any sophistry, or by
the allegation of any mystic principle whatever. Yet the power to
support, and the power to create a population, are just as distinct, the
one from the other, as the constitution of the external world is distinct
from the constitution or physiology of human nature. It is not an
increase of the former power which gives rise to an increase of the
latter — it only gives situation and space for the development of iis
energies. Should a population, when every let and hindrance of a
straitened subsistence is removed, be able to double itself in fifteen
years — it would still have the inherent ability of doing so, after that
every acre on the face of the globe had been advanced to its state of
uttermost cultivation. The power of populatit.n would then be kept
in perpetual abeyance — with a constant disposition to transgress
beyond the limits of the world's food, and as constant a check on the
expansion of the capabilities which belong to it.'

* All this is very generally allowed ; but then the imagination of
many is, that not until the world be fully cultivated and fully peopled,
shall we have any practical interest in the question. They seem to
think of the doctrine of Malthus, that the consideration of it may,
with all safety, be postponed, till the agriculture of every country and
every clime have been carried to its extreme perfection ; and that,
meanwhile, the population may proceed as rapidly and recklessly as it
may. When a household is straitened by its excessive numbers, or a
parish is oppressed by its redundant families — they would bar every
argument about the proximate causes of this inconvenience, by the
allegation that there were still thousands of unreclaimed acres at home,
or millions in distant places of the earth, though of as little real or
substantial consequence to the suffering parties, as if the land were
situated in another planet. They appear to conceive, that ere any
body can be felt as an obstacle to our progress, it must have come to
a dead stand — not aware that to act as a check or impediment, it has
only to move more slowly, though in the same direction, than at the
rate in which we are advancing ourselves. They proceed on the idea,
that no shock or collision can be felt but by the stroke of an impel-
lent on a body at rest — whereas it is enough if the body be but mov-
ing at a tardier pace. In the one case, the strength of the collision
would be estimated by the whole velocity — yet, in the other, there
might still be a very hard collision, though estimated only by a diffe-
rence of velocities. It is thus that, for the continued pressure of the
world's population on its food, it is far from necessary that the
food should have reached that stationary maximum, beyond which
it cannot be carried. It is enough, for this purpose, that the
limit-of the world's abundance, though it does recede, should recede
more slowly than would the limit of the world's population. A
pressure, and that a very severe one, may be felt for many ages

172

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

together, from a difference in the mere tendencies of their in-
crease. The man, who so runs as to break his head against a walU
might receive a severe contusion, even to the breaking of his head, if,
instead of a wall, it had been a slowly retiring barrier. And therefore
we do not antedate matters, by taking up now the consideration of
Malthus' preventive and positive checks to population. There is
scarcely a period, even in the bygone history of the world, when the
former checks have not been called for, and the latter have not been
in actual operation. To postpone either the argument or its appli-
cation till the agriculture of the worhl shall be perfected, is a most
unpractical, as well as a most unintelligent view of the question — for
long ere this distant consummation can be realized, and even now,
may the obstacle of a slowly retiring limit begin to be felt. The ten-
dency of a progressive population to outstrip the progressive culture
of the earth, may put mankind into a condition of straitness and diffi-
culty — and that for many generations before the earth shall be wholly
cultivated. We are not sure, but it may have done so from the com-
mencement of the race, and throughout all its generations. Certain
it is, at all events, that the produce of the soil cannot be made to in-
crease at the rate that population would increase. Neither mechani-
cal invention nor more intense manual labour is sufficient for this
purpose. On the supposition that the numbers of mankind were to
increase up to their natural capability of increase, no human skill or
human labour,'though doing their uttermost, could suffice for raising
a produce up to the population — nor will the mass of society ever be
upheld in comfort, without the operation of certain other principles,
by which to restrain the excess of the population over the produce.' —
17.

' If it be not possible, then, to sustain in comfort and sufficiency
the working classes, by keeping up the produce to the population,
when suffered to proceed accordnig to its own spontaneous energies —
there seems only to be another alternative for the achievement of this
great problem, that of keeping down the population to the produce.
We know of no right, or comfortable, or efficient way of doing this,
than by the establishment of a habit and a principle among the
labourers themselves. If they will in general enter recklessly into
marriage, it is not possible to save a general descent in their circum-
stances. By the operation of causes already explained, a population
may flow onward, in the way of increase, from one age to another,
without any abridgment on the comforts of our peasantry. When
these are trenched upon, it is no longer a flow — but we should call it
an overflow.' — 22.

This is all strikingly true ; and mixed up with many new
lights which increase the final knowledge of the suhject, at
the same time that they enliven the road. It all, however,
forms only a hranch, or leader, towards the main conclusions
in which the world is interested. And the apprehension may
be, (which it is useful to intimate thus early,) that the whole
of this belongs to one side of a complication of causes, the

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

1/3

other side of which demands more attention than is finally
given to it ;— that the case is in fact something like that of a
philosopher, who in discussing the planetary motions should
have bestowed his attention on the centripetal force to the
injury of the centrifugal.

The next Chapter is on the " Increase and Limit of Em-
ployment which forms the natural sequence to the subject
of the other.

« But though the progress of cultivation, and the produce extracted
by labourers from the last and farthest margin of it, do truly repre-
sent both the progress in numbers, and the state in respect to com-
fort, of our operative population ; and though, when viewed in this way,
the conclusion seems irresistible, that there is a slowly-receding limit
to the means of subsistence, on which population is ever pressing, so
that if it press too hardly, it must straiten and depress the condition
of labourers — yet we hear of a thousand other expedients for an ame-
lioration in the state of the working classes of society, beside the
only eflPectual expedient of a general principle and prudence in regard
to marriages, which it is for the working classes of society, and them
alone, to put into operation. What gives plausibility to these expe-
dients is, that society is so exceedingly complicated a thing ; insomuch
that, when viewed in some one aspect, it holds out a promise of im-
provement or relief, which, under another or more comprehensive
aspect, is seen to be quite illusory. For example, when one witnesses
the vast diversity of trades, or employments, in society, by each of
which, or at least in the prosecution of which, so many thriving fami-
lies are supported, then it is conceived, that the high-way for the
relief of the unprovided is to find them a trade, to find them
employment. Or, when looking to the connection between capital
and labour, and perceiving that the ofHce of the former is to maintain
the latter — then, on the idea that capital may, by the operation of
parsimony and good management, be extended ad infimtum, it is held,
by almost every economist of hi^h name, that every accumulation of
capital carries an addition along with it to the subsistence of labour-
ers. Or again, when one looks to the multitudes supported by foreign
trade, in all its departments, the imagination is, that, as agriculture
has its capabilities, so commerce has its distinct and additional capa-
bilities ; and that, whatever limit there may be to the power of the
one for the maintenance of families, this is amply made up by the in-
definite extension which might be given to the other. Again, we
often hear taxation vaguely, though confidently talked of, as the
great incubus on the prosperity of labourers ; and that, if this were
only lightened or removed, there would thenceforth ensue a mighty
enlargement both of industry and comfort to the families of the work-
ing classes. And then, in the list of national grievances, we hear of
the enormous and overgrown properties which are vested in the few —
and a general abundance diffused among the many is figured to be
the consequence that would result, if not from the spoliation and forci-
ble division of this wealth, at least from the abolition of entails, and

1 74 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy »

of the law of primogeniture. Or in the absence, perhaps the faihire,
of all these expedients, emigration is held forth as a sovereign speci-
fic for all the distresses of an over-crowded land. And, lastly, after
every thing but the moral habit of labom-ers themselves has been
thought of, there follows, in this list of artifices for their relief, a
scheme, which no longer existing in fancy, has been bodied forth into
actual operation, and is the one of all others most directly fitted to
undermine the principle and prudence of labourers — even a compul-
sory tax on the wealthy for the relief of the destitute, so as to disarm
poverty of its terrors, and proclaim a universal impunity for dissi-
pation and idleness. Now that this last great expedient has been
adverted to, we need scarcely advert to any of those lesser ones, which,
though but the crudities of mere sentimentalism, have been proposed,
each as a grand panacea, for all the disorders of the social state, —
such as the cottage system, and the cow system, and the village eco-
nomy of Mr. Owen, and the various plans of home colonization that
have been thought to supersede the lessons of Malthus, or, at least,
practically to absolve us from all regard to them for centuries to
come.' — p. 32.

This, again, appears to be all true, under the reservation that
there is another half of the story to come. Men in general begin
vehemently to suspect, or more properly stoutly to believe, that
cow systems and cottage systems and village economies, are all
either mere tubs for the whale or at best a shifting of the evil from
one set of men to some other set, so long as the limitation upon
the food of the community at large is to be permitted to con-
tinue. If this is to continue, the sooner the public comes to
the conviction the better, that there is no remedy but obstinate
refusal to multiply. And the same conviction will be found
true, with respect to that degree and portion of limitation, or
more properly of pressure, which in all imaginable circum-
stances however happy, will be discovered to be existing. But
still there remains the question, of what the pressure shall be
allowed to be. The case is a more complex one than at first
appears. On one side of the calculation stands the evil, of the
necessity for what is styled prudence, but in plainer language
should be submission to suffering ; an evil which would be at
its maximum in a state of society where the increase of the first
necessaries of life was absolutely impracticable, and which
exists in other states of society in proportion to the degree in
which this increase is slow, laborious, and clogged with obsta-
cles. On the other side stand the causes which prevent or
restrain the increase of food ; with the examination of how far
they are necessary and inevitable and how far not, — how far
they are of nature's creating and how far of man's, — how far
they exist by heaven's ordinance and how far by Act of Parlia-
ment. And the general inference to which the whole inquiry

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy, 175

points, — to put it into a mathematical form, which conveys a
clearness to some persons that makes up for its obscurity to
others, — is that the happiness of the labouring classes, or the
quantity of well-being by which they rise above the melancholy
condition in which they exist under an absolute impossibility
of any increase, varies as the rale at which the increase of food
is proceeding, or in other words as the fluxion of the food,
H oc F. Those may laugh at the form who like ; but a mathe-
matical formula, when right, is a terrible modification of truth,
a round- shot-hke method of conveyance, which goes far and
tells dangerously on arriving at its destination.

Another important inference from the phsenomena which
the author has so much contributed to throw light upon, is
that nature infallibly intended there should be rich men. No-
thing but artifice the most complicated, and violence the most
outrageous, could by possibility hinder this consummation
from taking place. And the individuals intended in the first
instance to be rich, are manifestly the worthies who succeed in
pushing through the difficulties attendant upon breaking up
new countries. To be landed gentlemen is the natural reward
of the fathers of new settlements, if they are not defrauded by
external misgovernment, and live long enough to receive their
recompense. It is the prize assigned to the successful in the
lottery of a peculiarly hazardous kind of industry. And it is
not difficult to see, how well devised it is, and how accordant
with the physico-theology which the study of political economy
everywhere brings to light, that there should be some distinct
provision for raising up out of the proceeds of industry a race
of men who can " live at home at ease." Much that improves
and much that adorns society, arises out of such a dispensation.
And let none be dull enough to mistake this for Toryism ; the
Tory creed is, that men ought to be robbed, to make up such a
class. It is against this sentiment that the community at last is
up in arms, and has proclaimed a ^z^erm al cuchillo against the
last rag and remnant of everything that holds by such a tenure.
There will be a spending class, but no taking class ; the shears
are sharpened and set, which whether Jack or Peter holds the
handles, will clip their phylacteries into the closest fashion that
has been witnessed since the Roundheads. Our forefathers were
great at such an operation ; and the signs of the times show
clearly, that the world is close upon the portion of its course
where the phsenomenon must be repeated. It is not wealth
that is the evil ; it is the habit of dishonesty that wealth has
got into. The moment a man gets wealth, he begins to cast
about for the means of getting more by the plunder of his
neighbours; and the government of the country, from the

1 76 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

memory of living men to the late accession of the Whig and
Radical dynasty, has been one great joint-stock committee of
management, for the organization of the plans of individuals
upon this point into an operative whole. Once or oftener has
the resistance to it been put down, by the skill of the plun-
derers in confounding the attack on unjust wealth with attacks
on wealth in the abstract, and the awkwardness of the assail-
ants in leaving pegs for the fallacy to hang upon. But honest
men, as well as the devil, may grow wiser than of yore ; and
on no point have they attained more light, than on the distinc-
tion between that kind of wealth and property which society is
united to defend, and that w^iich it is united to pull down.

' Had no ground yielded more in return for the labour expended
on it, than the food of the cultivators and their secondaries, the exist-
ence of one and all of the human race would have been spent in mere
labour. Everyman would have been doomed to a life of unremitting
toil for his bodily subsistence ; and none could have been supported
in a state ot" leisure, either for idleness, or for other employments,
than those of husbandry, and such coarser manufactures, as serve to
provide society with the second necessaries of existence. The species
would have risen but a few degrees, whether physical or moral, above
the condition of mere savages. It is just because of a ftrtility in the
earth, by which it yields a surplus over and above the food of the
direct and secondary labourers, that we can command the services of
a disposable population, who, in return for their maintenance, minister
to the proprietors of this surplus, all the higher comforts and elegan-
cies of life. It is precisely to this surplus we owe it, that society is
provided with more than a coarse and a bare supply for the necessities
of animal nature. It is the original fund out of which are paid the
expenses of art, and science, and civilization, and luxury, and law, and
defence, and all, in short, that contributes either to strengthen or to
adorn the commonwealth. Without this surplus, we should have had
but an agrarian population — consisting of husbandmen, and those
few homely and rustic artificers, who, scattered in hamlets over the
land, would have given their secondary services to the whole popu-
lation. It marks an interesting connection between the capabilities of
the soil, and the condition of social life, that to this surplus we st<3nd
indispensably indebted, for our crowded cities, our thousand manufac-
tories for the supply of comforts and refinements to society, our wide
and diversified commerce, our armies of protection, our schools and
colleges of education, our halls of legislation and justice, even our
altars of piety and temple services. It has been remarked by geolo-
gists, as the evidence of a presiding design in nature, that the waste of
the soil is so nicely balanced by the supply from the disintegration of
the upland rocks, which are worn and pulverised at such a rate, as to
keep up a good vegetable mould on the surface of the earth. But
each science teems with the like evidences of a devising and intelli-
gent God ] and when we view aright the many beneficent functions,

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy. 1 77

to which, through the instrumentality of its surplus produce, the
actual degree of the earth's fertility is subservient, we cannot imagine
a more wondrous and beautiful adaptation between the state of exter-
nal nature and the mechanism of human society.' — p, 45,

The negative as here put is something too strong ; and may
be held to be parcel of a theory by which the author attributes
extraordinary properties to the fact of the production of rent.
It maybe shrewdly suspected, that specimens of all the good
things mentioned might have existed, in situations where there
should be no such thing as is commonly meant by the rent of
land. But the fact that the existence of rent is a cause, and a
very principal cause, of these good things in the actual circum-
stances of this and most other countries, remains untouched by
the inaccuracy.

The succeeding Sections attack a form of error, which though
weakened is far from being passed away. Our well-wigged
ancestors had a devout belief, that there was no cause of want
but idleness, and that every boy who came to London and
worked as hard as Whittington, was incontinently Lord Mayor.
This might be excusable in their times, but their posterity have
had bitter reason to discover to the contrary ; in spite of which,
it does still appear, as if men's blindness to the fact was in some
direct ratio to their personal benevolence. Humanity, to this hour,
expends itself in making what nobody will buy. The scheme for
destroying poverty by mop and broom-making, is daily repro-
duced with all the variety the vehicle is capable of. A man
would have been mobbed till within these few years, who should
have maintained that it was through anything but downright
refusal to work and to save, that any able-bodied man was poor.
Nothing but the public misery, has forced on the public a better
knowledge.

* It is thus that, in proportion as the mechanism of social life be-
comes more complex, it is also all the more bewildering ; and, amid the
intricacy of its manifold combinations, we lose sight both of the
springs and the limits of human maintenance. One very wide and
prevalent delusion, more especially, and which has misguided both
the charity of philanthropists and the policy of statesmen, is, that the
employment in which men are engaged is the source of their mainte-
nance, — whereas, it is only the channel through which they draw that
maintenance from the hands of those who buy the products of their
employment. This principle has in it all the simplicity of a truism —
and yet it is wonderful with what perversity of apprehension, both
the managers of a state and the managers of a parish miss the sight
of it. Whether we look to acts of parliament, or to the actings of a
parochial vestry — we shall find them proceeding on its being the
grand specific for the relief of the poor, to find employment for them.

VOL. II. M

178 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

Now, unless that employment be the raising of food, it does nothing
to alleviate the disproportion between the numbers of the people and
the means of their subsistence, — and if there be a limit, as we have
already demonstrated, to the food, we may be very sure that this
device of employment will not turn out a panacea for the distresses of
an over-burdened land.'

^ But the fallacy to which we now advert, is not confined to the
matters of practical administration. It may also be recognized in the
theories of those who have attempted to adjust the philosophy of the
subject. In political economy it will often be found, that the channel
is confounded with the source, — and hence a delusion, not in the
business of charity alone, but which has extended far and wide among
the lessons of the science.'

^ And yet it is a delusion which, one might think, should be dissi-
pated by but one step of explanation. A single truism puts it to
flight. Nothing appears more obvious, than that any trade or manu-
facture originates only its own products. All that a stocking-maker
contributes to society is simply stockings. This, and nothing more,
is what comes forth of his establishment. And the same is true of all
the other trades or employments which can be specified. They work
off nothing, they emanate nothing but their own peculiar articles.
Were this sure and simple axiom but clearly and stedfastly kept in
view, it would put to flight a number of illusions in political science,
— illusions which have taken obstinate hold of our legislators, and
which to this moment keep firm possession in the systems of many
of our economists. They almost all, in a greater or less degree,
accredit a manufacture with something more than its own products.
The inclination is, to accredit it also with the maintenance of its la-
bourers. In every transaction of buying and selling, there are two
distinct elements, — the commodity, and the price of the commodity;
of which price, the maintenance of the labourers is generally far the
largest ingredient. Now, the thing to be constantly kept in view is,
that a manufacture should only be accredited Avith its own commo-
dity, and not, over and above this, with the price of its commodity.
These two stand, as it were, on different sides of an exchange. To
the manufacture is to be ascribed all that we behold on the one side.
It furnishes the commodity for the market. But it did not also
create the wealth that supplies the price of the commodity. It does
not furnish society with both itself and its equivalent. The latter
comes from a distinct quarter : and we repeat, that by confounding,
in imagination, two things which are distinct in fact, a false direction
has been given, both to the policy of States, and to the theories of
philosophers.' — p. 47.

There may be held to be truth in this, provided impartial-
ity be mtended to be maintained between the stockings and
the equivalent, which is manifestly understood to be corn. It
is true that the stocking-maker cannot do without corn ; but it
is equally true that the land-owner cannot do without stockings.
If one man was condemned to have all stockings and no corn,

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

179

and the other all corn and no stockings, the difference would
be small ; especially if to stockings be added such other articles
of dress, as may go more strictly under the title of indispensa-
bles. Let it be settled that the stockings shall be only stock-
ings ; bat at the same time let the corn be only corn.

' This confusion of sentiment appears in a variety of ways. When
pne sees a thriving and industrious village, and that the employment
of the families secures for them their maintenance, it is most natural
to invest the former vi^ith a power of command, tantamount to a power
of creation over the latter. The two go together; and because when
the employment ceases, the maintenance ceases, it is conceived of the
former, that in the order of causation it has the precedency. We
affirm of a ^hawl-making village, that all which it yields to society
is shawls. We accredit it with this, but with nothing more. But it
is accredited with a great deal more, by those who talk in lofty style
of our manufacturing interest, and the dependence thereupon of a
nation's support and a nation's greatness. We hold, that if, through
the exhaustion of the raw material, or any other cause, there were to
be an extinction of the employment, the country would only be de-
prived of its wonted supply of shawls ; but the prevalent imagi-
nation is, that the country would be deprived of its wonted sup-
port for so many hundred families. The whole amount of the
mischief, in our estimation, would be the disappearance of shawls ;
in theirs, it would be the disappearance of that which upheld
an integral part of the country's population. It is forgotten, that
though shawls may no longer be produced or brought to market, the
price that wont to be paid for them is still in reserve, and ready to be
expended by the purchasers on some other article of accommodation
or luxury. The circumstances which have broui^ht the manufacture
to ruin, do not affect the ability of those who consumed the products
of the manufacture. The employment is put an end to ; but the main-
tenance comes from another quarter, and can be discharged in as great
abundance as before, on as large a population. Their employment in
making shawls was not the source of their maintenance ; it was only
the channel by which they drew it to their homes. The destruction
or stoppao:e of the channel, does not infer a stoppage at the source,
that will find for itself another channel, through which all that enters
into the maintenance of our industrious families, might be effused
upon them as liberally as before. We dispute not the temporary evils
of the transition. W e allow that a change of employment may bring
individual and temporary distress along with it. But we contend, that
the expenditure of those who support our disposable population will
not be lessened, but only shifted by this new state of things ; and
that, after the change is accomplished in the direction of their indus-
try, we should behold as numerous a society as ever, upheld with the
same liberality in every thing (with the smgle exception of shawls,
and the substitution of some other luxury, in their place) that enters
into the comfort and convenience of families.' — p. v50.

Of course there is nothing in this peculiar to shawls. A
M 2

180

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

parallel phsenomenon would take place in agriculture, if either
the race of beans were utterly to decay, or men and horses were
for some reason to unite in refusing to consume them, as for
instance might be the consequence of their being proved the
cause of cholera and murrain. The bean lands would all be
applied to growing something else ; and there might be conside-
rable evil in the transition, or even a permanent loss. But still in
the main, the ultimate phsenomenon would be a transfer.

* But we are further persuaded, that the confusion of sentiment
which we are now attempting to expose, has had a most misleading
effect on the views and the policy of statesmen : at one time, in-
spiring a false hope on the promised extension of trade and manu-
factures ; and, at another time, creating a false alarm on the appear-
ance of their decay. Our legislators do ascribe a higher function to
trade and manufactures, than that of simply furnishing society with
the articles manufactured. They conceive of them as the dispensers
of a transcendently greater benefit, than the mere use and enjoyment
of these articles. There are other and nobler interests associated in
their minds with the trade and manufactures of the country, than the
mere gratification and convenience which individuals have in the use
of their products. This will at once be evident, if we resolve the ma-
nufacturing interest into its several parts, — as the shawl-making in-
terest, wherewith our senate would not for a moment concern them-
selves, if they thoui^ht that all which hinged upon it was the supply
of shawls— nor the stocking-making interest, if in their opinion
nothing else depended on it but the supply of stockings — nor the
carpet -making interest, if it involved no other or higher consideration
than the su[ ply of carpets — nor the buckle-making interest, if they
did not suppose that, beside owing to it the supply of buckles, we
furthermore owed the maintenance and wealth of buckle-makers.
And the remark may be extended from manufactures to commerce *.
We should have had no grave deliberations on the China trade, or
the Portuguese trade, or the West India trade, if something far loftier
had not been associated with these respective processes, than that of serv-
ing the families of the land with tea, or wine, or oranges, or sugar, or
coffee, or tobacco. These mighty commercial interests are conceived
to be productive of something greatly more magnificent and national ;
and not only the income of all the capitalists, and the maintenance
of all the labourers engaged in them, but the strength, and revenue,
and political greatness of the State, are somehow associated witli their
defence and preservation. It is forgotten, of each trade and ea.ch
manufacture, that it furnishes, and can furnish, nothing but its own
proper and peculiar articles ; and that, abstracting from the use and
enjoyment of these, every other associated benefit is comprehendedin
the equivalent price which is paid for them. All that the wine-trade

* * In extending the observation from home to foreign trade, we presuppose,
what we shall afterwards attempt to show more particularly, that the terminus
ad quern of foreign trade, is the benefit, or enjoyment, administered by the
commodities which it imports, to the inland consumers.*

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

181

of Portugal, for example, furnishes to our nation is wine — and, in
reference either to the public revenue which arises from it, or to the
private revenue wherewith it both enriches the capitalists, and supports
the labourers employed in it, these are yielded, not most assuredly
by the wine, but by the price given for the wine. The wine-trade is
but the channel through which these flow, and not the source in which
they originate. But, notwithstanding, there is yet a mystic i)Ower
ascribed to the wine-trade, as if part of the nation's glory and the
nation's strength were linked with the continuance of it. And hence
a legislature tremulously alive to the state of our relations with Por-
tugal, lest the wine-trade should be destroyed. Now though, from
the interruption of these relations, or from any other cause, the wine-
trade, on the one side, were destroyed, the counterpart wealth, on the
other side, would not be destroyed. It would remain with its owners,
to be expended by them on the purchase of some new luxury in place
of the vvme ; by the natural price of which, the same return could be
made to capitalists and labourers, and by a tax on which, the same
revenue might be secured to government as before.'

^ It must be obvious, that employment in agriculture is not an in-
definite resource for an indefinite population — seeing that it must stop
short at the land which refuses to yield the essential food of its direct
and secondary labourers. And it should be equally obvious, that as
little is employment in manufactures an indefinite resource — seeing
that the definite quantity of food raised can only sustain a certain and
definite number of labourers. The latter position seems, on the first
announcement, to carry its own evidence along with it ; yet there is a
certain subtle imagination in its way, which we have attempted to
dispose of. Our argument rests on the veriest truism — that a manu-
facture is creative of nothing beyond its own products. But truism
though it is, it has been strangely overlooked, not only in the devices
of the charitable, but both in the policy of statesmen, and in the doc-
trinal schemes of the economists. Yet we think a sufficient expla-
nation can be given, both of the manner in which the perverse
miNConception at first arose, and of the obstinacy wherewith it still
lingers and keeps its ground amongst us.' — p. 52.

The learned author's truism is not true. The trade to Portugal
is to exchange knives which we cannot use at home, for wine
which we can. If we had a soil of granite, we might still live
in plenty on the meat and drink obtained for our manufactures
abroad ; and in such a case, to stop the trade to Portugal
would clearly be to stop one inlet to the national support. If it
is urged that the knives might be sent to France to buy brandy
instead, it must be at a loss ; for the fact of a gain being made
by it, was the only reason why they were not sent to France before.
The fallacy is in sinking the fact to please the landlords, that
manufactures, through the medium of foreign exchange,
can be as distinctly the procreation of the national food, as if
it fell out of the manufacturers' machines. A manufacture at
Sheffield that is exchanged abroad for corn, as far as England

182 Di\ Chalmers on Political Economy.

is concerned creates corn and nothing else. The fallacy is the
old one of the landed tyrants, of first assuming that there is no
corn to be eaten but their own, and then talking of it as if this
was an ordinance of nature. A zoologist might as well describe
horses as naturally without tails, because men cut them olf.
The definite quantity of food raised," should have been fol-
lowed by the words, " under a tyranny which prohibits com-
merce by Act of Parliament." AH effbrts to establish any es-
sential distinction in favour of agriculture, are based on this
omission. When this is avoided, all kinds of production will
be found to be subject to the same laws, and all alike appli-
cable to the creation of national sustenance and wealth ; as has
already been authenticated by M. Say on one prominent parti-
cular in which they were supposed to dififer, namely the circum-
stance of being produced under what may be called a natural
monopoly. l^Say.YoX. iv. Ch. 20. Translated in the Westminster
Review for April 1832. See p. %7 of the present Volume.']

If a number of human beings were embarked on a six months'
voyage, with the understanding that they were to work in
various ways for the purser on the passage, and receive from
him such portions of beef and biscuit as he should be induced
to give for their work under the competition that would arise, —
it is as plain as most things in this world, that if such purser with
a view to making the best of a limited capital, had gone to sea
with only three months' stock, no possible diligence among the
operatives could turn it into six, or by any subtlety of man
create a plenty for the voyage. They that worked best and
hardest might fare better than the rest, and it is even possible
that some of them might obtain for themselves a tolerable com-
petency. But if these got more, somebody else must get less ;
and it is as clear as Euclid, that the crew must be on half
allowance in the aggregate. And if any well-meaning indivi-
duals should insist on the extent to which the prospect of gain
would induce this purser to sow mustard-seed and small salad
in wet blankets in the tops and quarter-galleries, and cherish
laying hens in the coops, and carefully preserve the sweepings
of the hold and the shakings of his bread-bags which in ordi-
nary times would have been thrown overboard for riddance ;
and if the same personifications of benevolence should exhort
each of the crew to get a nice little bag, and dihgently collect
his crumbs, and see what a nice little supper he w^ould make
once a week out of his savings : it would be plain that it was
well as far as it went, but that all this was perfect noodleism if
it was held forth as any eff'ectual removal of the evil, and most of
all if it was represented as what ought to be trusted to in future
voyages, or supersede the real preventive, which would be to

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy, 183

bring the purser into port at the yard-arm in terror em to future
experimentalists. And if the case was extended so as to admit
of the supposition that the population had a tendency to in-
crease, — as may be done by substituting the tenants of a be-
sieged town, in a leaguer of the duration fashionable in anti-
quity, — it would be equally plain that no mortal exertions in the
way of labour could make provision for an increase of population
under such circumstances, or prevent the certainty that if a
lucky few could obtain enough to keep their offspring alive, a
proportionate destruction of children or grown people through
want must take place in some other part in consequence.

Here then is a triumphant proof of the precedency of agri-
culture ! can anybody deny that commerce must be dependent
upon food? It is all true. But is this all? And is this the
only case ? Suppose the case put, was of a Venice or a Tyre, a
mud-bank or a rock in respect of the faculty of growing corn,
but endowed with the power of procuring it with scarcely an
assignable limit, by exchanging the results of manufacturing
industry exercised on commodities of either domestic or foreign
origin, joined, it may be, to the exercise of that particular kind
of industry which consists in being carriers by sea for foreign
nations. What now becomes of the precedency of agriculture ?
It is true that all corn must be got by some agriculture ; but
this was not the thing meant. When people talk of the pre-
cedency of agriculture, they mean the agriculture of the mud-
bank at home. The mistake therefore is simply in talking
of agriculture as if there was no corn to be had but from
the cultivation of the mud-bank ; — in stating what would be
correct if there was none else procurable, and applying it to the
case where this is not true at all, or where if it be true it is only
through the interference of point-blank tyranny and undisguised
wrong, operating in a particular direction as they would operate
in many others if men were feeble and ignorant enough to give
them leave.

In the next four Sections, there is something that desires
further sifting, to remove a semblance of contradiction. If
** the prime, the executive agent in Europe, for unlocking the
capabilities of the soil," was commerce, how is it that it should
not be "an efficient cause f There is a deficiency somewhere ;
and the asserted " dependence of the latter upon the former"
[p. 62], is the point to be suspected. It may be perfectly true
that manufacturers cannot exist without food ; but is it not
equally true, that agriculturists cannot exist without manu-
factures ? If there are varieties in manufactured goods, so
there are in food ; there are all the gradations from frumenty
to pheasant. It is no more fair to assume that the manu-

1 84 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy^

facturer wants nothing but dry bread, than that the agricul-
turist wants only huckaback. The conclusion of which a prospect
appears to be held out, is that in countries where the facilities
for creating manufactured goods are greater than for creating
food, the power of exchanging goods for foreign corn is the
road to the increase of the public wealth and happiness ; and
vice versa f where the facilities are greatest for producing corn,
the power of exchanging it for manufactured goods. If Eng-
land mai/ not buy the corn of Poland, and Poland consequently
cannot buy the manufactures of England, — then two countries
are condemned to suffering, to please the tyrants of the soil in
one. And in each country it is probable that an imaginary
importance will be assigned to the produce artificially prohi-
bited. In England, the man who produces corn will set up his
claim to precedence. In Poland every boor can create corn ;
but where is the man that can create a yard of cloth ? It is
not difhcult to see that in both cases the precedence is equally
without foundation in anything but artificial restraints. If
English artisans might produce corn out of their looms and
theii* liatting-mills, the precedence claimed for the English
agriculturist would fall to the ground. If Polish corn could be ex-
changed for English cloth, a clothier in Poland would equally
decline in honours. The dispute between agriculture and manu-
factures will finally be settled by the discovery, that neither is
before or greater than the other, except when the wickedness of
man points a six-pounder against nature's bounty, and establishes
a cordon of bayonets for the intercepting of her favours.

It is not easy to account for the neglect of these considera-
tions displayed in the reasonings of this portion of the work,
except by supposing that all scepticism on the subject is
reserved till arriving at the part where a free trade in corn is
immediately examined. This reservation, therefore, is neces-
sarily to be extended to the " momentous distinction'^ between
agriculture and commerce, in the form in which it at present
stands, and to the deduction

^ that the owners of the soil, in virtue of the property which belongs
to them, have a natural superiority over all other classes of men,
which by no device of politics or law can be taken av/ay from them.'
—p, 63.

Does this mean the Polish owners ? Clearly not. With respect
to the others, therefore, it cannot be correct, except on the
supposition that the freedom of the trade in corn is finally
proved impossible. Till this is proved, instead of no device,"
every man has a device. There is a device as simple, as the
child's invention of taking its fingers out of the fire. Take away
the power of injustice. If highwaymen were uppermost, they

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

185

would have pro tanto " a natural superiority over all other
classes of men but this would not prevent the discovery of a
"device of politics or law" that should speedily be operative
whenever honest men recovered the superiority. The deficiency
which exists for the present, consists in confounding what land-
lords are while under an unjust state of law, with what they
would be if the law was just. The whole of the arguments
on this particular portion of the subject, proceed on the as-
sumption that the land-owners and the law by which they
happen at this moment to hold the power of prohibition, are
identical and inseparable. The assumption is indeed carried to
such a length, as in the eyes of those who are not convinced
of the ultimate soundness of the explanation in reserve, to
suggest the idea of men who should be seen sitting reasoning
on the necessity of being burned in their houses alive, when
apparently all they had to do was to open their back door and
walk out. Yet this does not hinder the whole from being in-
terspersed with most undeniable pickings of admirable reason-
ing and illustration, which will serve a powerful purpose in the
hands of those who are able to make use of them. Take for
example the description of the system of " expedients" in the
concluding Section ; always however reserving the assent to the
conclusion that we are in a state of *' nearness to the ultimate
and immoveable barrier of our resources," and not rather that
we are nearer to its entire removal than ever, and shall be
nearer still by twenty-four hours tomorrrow.

' Meanwhile, as the difficulties thicken, and the pressure becomes
more severe, the expedients multiply. This is a teeming age for all
sorts of crudities ; and we have no doubt, that our very nearness to
the ultimate and immoveable barrier of our resources, has made the
necessity to be all the more intensely felt, and so given additional
impulse to the speculations of philanthropists. Among others, the
favourite device of employment has been acted on to a very great
extent ; though its inefficacy as a resource, one might think, should
be abundantly obvious, on the simple axiom, that employment is
creative of nothing but its own products. It was a' far more rational
and likely expedient centuries ago, in the earlier state of our agricul-
ture, than it is at present; nor need we wonder, though in these days
they should often have experienced a most convenient absorption of
poverty and idleness in whole masses, simply by providing and dealing
out work. There was room then for such an absorption, when the
increasing products of the towns and villages could be met by the
increasing products of a land, whose capabilities were yet so far from
being fully overtaken. We accordingly meet with this expedient in
the innumerable parliamentary acts of other days, for the suppression
or the regulation of mendicity; and it was long the favourite scheme,
both of parochial counsellors, and of individual philanthropists. The
general rule of society is, that each man lives by his business; and the

185 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

first natural imagination is, that this conjunction between work and
maintenance is just, in every instance where poverty and idleness are
seen together, to be repeated over again. England is rife with this
experiment throughout her teeming parishes ; and quarrying, and
road-making, and breaking stones, and digging in gravel pits, and the
manifold branches of in-door labour in work-houses, have all been
devised ; that, if possible, by the products of their industry, their sur-
plus people might earn for themselves their subsistence, or a part of
their subsistence. The conception is prevalent all over, and has been
endlessly diversified into various ingenuities, alike amiable and abortive.
The platting of straw, and picking of hemp, and various sorts of
millinery and hand-manufactures, have all been tried and found
wanting. The effect is a general depression in the price of the pre-
pared article, whatever it may be ; or if the article be altogether new,
the purchasers who are allured to it, are withdrawn from the purchase
of other articles. On either supposition, a whole fbody of regular
labourers are impoverished by the weight of these additional products
upon the general market ; and so utterly fruitless indeed has it turned
out as a permanent resource, that, in despair, the expedient has been
abandoned in many parishes, and the extra population are suffered to
lead a kind of lazaroni life in idleness, and in the mischief and crime
which are attendant upon idleness. The truth is, that if home colo-
nization fail, employment in manufactures is far more likely to fail.
By the former, a certain portion at least of sustenance, is drawn from
the earth in return for labour — though inadequate to the full mainte-
nance of the labourers. By the other, something is produced too, but
it is not sustenance ; but a commodity to be offered in return for
sustenance ; and which cannot earn that sustenance for additional
labourers, save at the expense of all previous labourers. The home
colonist, at work among the inferior soils, may perhaps extract from
them three-fourths of his maintenance, and leave the remaining fourth
a burden upon society. The workman in a charity manufacture, burdens
society with the whole of his subsistence. The article he prepares be-
comes cheaper and more plentiful than before ; but he himself becomes
the instrument of a general distress, by inducing a dearness and a
scarcity on that which is most essential to families.' — p. 71.

The learned author has laid the axe to the roots, of the
silliness which looks for relief to anything but the freedom of
the trade in corn.

The Chapter on the " Increase and Limit of Capital " is a
powerful stirring of that particular pool, and interesting results
may be expected from every portion of the agitation. The brief
definition of Capital is, that it is wealth employed in the pro-
duction of other wealth, Capital in short is a tool ; and as there
may be more tools than can be made use of by the men that can
be fed on a given quantity of corn, so there may be more capital,
which is only another word for the same thing. A few pass-
ages must be subjected to the reservation formerly described.
The inquiry into the nature of *' home colonization" is matter to

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy, 187

chew upon, both novel and important. The author has apparently
directed the arrow to the rio^ht place, by his intimation [p. 487]
that the pauper system of England is home colonization in
disguise ;" from which it is an feasy step to the suggestion,
that home colonization is the pauper system in disguise.
Both will be found to be the same face under different hoods.
By home colonization a hundred men are set to work to raise
the food of ninety ; and the money which the public supplies to
pay the difference, by its appearance in the market creates an
increase in the price of corn, which raises the food of the ten
men principally by a levy on the suppers of the class of people
who are just above receiving eleemosynary support, and in some
slight degree by the increased quantity of corn produced in
consequence of the increase of price. Home colonization and
the pauper system will be discovered to be identical in principle ;
but with this difference in the progress of the operations, that
in the pauper system the whole food of the paupers is to be
levied through the instrumentality of the increased price con-
sequent on giving the paupers the means of appearing as com-
petitors in the market, and in what is called home colonization
only the difference between the food of the hundred men and of
the ninety. Home colonization, therefore, is the pauper system,
applied through the medium of a losing trade in raising corn.

The Chapter on the parallel between " Population and Ca-
pital," looks very like the conquest of a new territory to poli-
tical mathematics. It was a valuable discovery that demon-
strated the tendency the force of population has to fill up the
gaps made in it by accident ; the odds are that it will end in
being demonstrated as clearly, that a process of the same kind
takes place with capital. An inference from this is, that as the
murder of a million or two of the human race does not leave a
permanent gap in the numbers, but is repaired quoad number
with vastly more pertinacity and celerity than was formerly
dreamed of, — so the wrongful taking of a few millions of capital
is repaired in a shorter period than would be expected, by a
natural operation of a similar kind. There would seem to be
truth in this. It is certain that the speculator would be wrong
who should assume, that if all the men killed in the wars
against liberty in America and France had been left unkilled,
they and their natural posterity would have been existing at
this hour in the shape of an addition to the numbers of the
European population. And by a parallel mode of reasoning, if
the thousands of millions expended on both sides in the same
miserable contest had been left untaken, it does not follow that
Europe would have been richer at this moment by that precise
amount with interest on the same. There may be a vis medi-

188

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

catrix in the case of the robbery as well as of the murder ; but
without forming an apology either for the robbery or the mur-
der. At the same time it would be wrong to omit noting the
integrity of purpose with which the author has gone into a train
of arguments, to prevent the possibility of his discovery being
applied to the defence of the funding system [See on the Na-
tional Debt," Appendix, p. 490]. Doubts may be suggested
on the absolute correctness of all these arguments ; consisting
principally in an apprehension, that when the public is described
as bereft of a given amount of enjoyment by means of higher
prices" [p. 494], it is overlooked that if one part of the public
was bereft of enjoyments by these higher prices, some other
part had its enjoyments increased. But whether this be so or
not, the impropriety of taking the money of the citizens by the
funding system, seems as clearly established as that of taking
their liVes.

The Chapter on the " Possibility of Over-Production," or of
a General Glut, may be described as estabhshing the possibihty
of such a phsenomenon, whenever there is a limit to the quantity
of the first necessary of life, which is food, and the population
is such as to press against that limit ; understanding always,
that by limit is not meant a limit absolutely incapable of ex-
tension upon increased effort, but that everything is a limit,
where the possibility of the increase of effort and of extension is
itself visibly limited. The simple evidences of the fact, indeed,
are in the shop of every trader in the country. Every trader
would sell twice as many goods if he could ; and why does he
not ? He would seldom have any difficulty in doubling the
quantity of goods in his shop, if that would produce the effect ;
but he knows it would not, and therefore avoids. He knows
that the goods in his shop, or all above what are necessary to
serve as specimens and supply his daily demand, are so many
things in mortmain, and for which he has paid in advance
without prospect of return, till a customer shall come and re-
lease the imprisoned angels. The quantity of goods makeable,
is quite a distinct thing from the quantity of goods saleable, if
men are either ignorant of what prudence would dictate, or
are tempted to run counter to it. If there is not a glut, there-
fore, it is because men take care there shall not be a glut ; but
the fact of its being necessary to take care, proves that a glut
might exist. Every shop and warehouse within the territory
might be loaded with a double stock; but the question of
whether these increased stocks could be sold and continue to
be sold, would depend on whether in consequence of their
creation, an increased quantity of food could be obtained sufficient
to satisfy the demands of those who are to be induced to labour

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy. 189

in the fabrication, and at such a price as would allow these
stocks to be sold at such a rate as would induce men to pur-
chase and consume them.

The two Chapters on " Foreign Trade" are extraordinary in-
stances of an individual's arriving at most liberal and equitable
conclusions, in spite of the pressure and occasional outbreak of
preconceived opinions of an opposite tendency. No stronger
internal evidence can be given of integrity ; and the conclusions
arrived at in this manner may be considered as doubly dangerous
to the side of the argument which the author, apparently,
would not desert if he could help it. It would be invidious to
be precise m enumerating all the traits in which the original
leaning is demonstrated ; but some of them are remarkable.
For example, the population of a country is divided [p. 21 9 j
into naturar^ and ''excrescent;'^ on the principle which
would give the name of natural to that portion of a ship's crew
which was fed on mustard and cresses grown about the decks,
and excrescent to all the rest. The export manufacturers be-
longing to what is designated by the last of these appellations,are
said [p. 229] to labour in the service, and be subsisted by the
wealth, of foreign customers as if the fact was not, that they
laboured in the service of themselves, and were subsisted by
the wealth which God gives them grace to command in their
vocation. The zeal to eat hot rolls and household bread though
made of foreign corn, is styled [p. 221] "our false and foolish
ambition;" with various unsavoury comparisons, from scrip-
ture and elsewhere. But all this must absolutely be over-
looked, for the honesty of the conclusions. It is impossible,
however, not to suggest, that the same conclusions might have
been come to by a shorter route. They present a mass of most
upright casuistry, ending in establishing that men ought no!;^
to steal, and that there will be very little harm from hindering
them. The source of the author's difficulties throughout, ap-
pears to be his conviction of a certain pre-eminence in dignity
of corn. Now no man denies that corn is among the necessaries
of life, and that it is that particular one of which we most ur-
gently want more if we could get it. But this does not seem
to take it out of the list of articles of commerce, or give it pro-
perties of its ov/n distinct from all the rest. The great secret
appears to be to have what we want ; — to get the most of what
we want that we can, and as the means to this end, to get it
where and how we can get it cheapest, or in other words, easiest.
The scripture Vv^as right in saying that man is not to live by
bread alone ; he lives by everything he wants, and he knows
best what he wants to live by. If you desire to have bread at
the top of your table, bread at the bottom, and bread for the

190 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

side dishes and dessert, — have it ; but if you like other things
better, as for instance Perigord pie, buy more Perigord pies
and less bread. And it really does not seem to signify one
pin to the general question, whether you, who shall be supposed
to be a manufacturer of knives at Sheffield, give your knives for
bread to an English land-owner, or preferring pie, transfer
them directly or indirectly to Perigord in payment for the
same. But it is urged that you must have been kept alive by
corn during the process of making the knives. So you may
have been by Epsom salts. It positively does not appear, that
there is greater inherent importance in one fact than the other.
If the corn, or the salts, were the produce of English industry,
be grateful for them, unless you paid for them. But if you
paid for them, then if the apothecary asks what would have
become of your bowels if he had not sold you his salts, ask him
what would have become of his if you had not been there to
buy ; and make precisely the same answer if the substance
you have swallowed with advantage was corn. It does abso-
lutely seem as if a bargain for corn, or for salts, cut equally
both ways, and there was no more gratitude due to the owner
of either for having consented to sell them to you in the way
of his trade, than to you for buying them. Each party did it
to serve himself ; and each party served himself, and there is
an end.

But these are inconsequential maculce, and the important
fact is, that a writer of great acuteness, coming to the conside-
ration of the subject with manifestly no prejudices in favour
of the side he finally takes but the contrary, did not discover a
shadow of an argument for the j ustice of forcibly preventing
men from eating foreign corn, however unworthy in his private
opinion the practice may be ; and could not, upon the maturest
deUberation, come to any conclusion, but that the dangers to
those who think themselves interested in the prohibition have
been greatly exaggerated, and are he believes vastly less than
those of letting things go on as they are. This is a most laud-
able conclusion ; and better for having been come at in such a
manner, than if it had been preluded by the bitterest attack
upon the landed interest that ever issued from the press. There
can be no doubt that their dangers have been overrated ; the
most forward of their opponents have said so, though it was not
their business to be pprticularly diffuse upon that point. The
land- owners,— like all men who have something they wish to
preserve, but suspect they ought to lose, — try to keep up each
other's spirits, by exaggerated descriptions of what they have at
sfelve. Each does his best to frighten his neighbour into reso-
lution^; -tind reserves his better judgment for his private com-

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy. 191

fort in the event of failure. Abuses are always in one sense
crying evils ; they do squall most prodigiously in articulo
mortis. Allowance therefore should be made upon this score ;
and they should never be believed on their own showing, for
more than a tithe of what their outcry would suggest.

The lamentable circumstance for the supporters of the corn
laws is, that httle by little all their friends will be picked away
from under them. The most feasible thing in the worlds when
information has taken a very few strides more, will be to con-
vince the farmers and agricultural labourers, or an efficient
portion of them, that they have at all events no urgent interest
in the continuance of the public wrong. They gained for a
season when the mischief was brought on, but their share in
the general suffering has long since eaten up the benefits. By
the converse of the case, it may be undeniable that the return
to justice will be attended with some present exacerbation of
their condition, but with the prospect of overpowering improve-
ment at no very remote period. This is not the most favour-
able position imaginable to invite men to resort to ; but it is a
position which there is no reason to despair of inducing a great
number of intelligent individuals to resort to in the end. There
will be a desertion, or at least a slackness, first among the
farmers and agricultural labourers, next among those descrip-
tions of landlords who are obliged to provide for their children
in the world themselves, and have no hopes of quartering them
on the public purse ; and the end will be, that the remaining
class of landlords with their few adherents, will have the honour
of jroing to the bottom in a minority together.

The author labours throughout under a species of dilemma,
betv/een the idea that cultivation receives an impulse from
foreign trade, and that it does not. His solution appears to be,
[p. 182] that it once received an impulse, but does not now.
The conclusion is a disputable one. It is palpable that many a
man makes exertions in cultivation, for the sake of having Port
wine or claret every day or a certain number of days in the week
at his table; and if the wine was not obtainable, it is reasonable
to suppose his exertions might at all events be diminished. It
may be urged that if there was no such thing as wine, some
other object of desire would take its place. But if all objects of
foreign produce were cut off, would not the range of objects of
desire be at all events greatly reduced, and must not this pro-
duce a partial if not a total removal of the exertions ? Would
not the individual in fact be carried back to the situation in which
it is allowed that the introduction of foreign trade produced a
start; and if the introduction produced a start, must not the
absence produce a retrograde movement towards the old point?

192

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

It does not seem conclusive to state, that the removal of one
particular foreign comfort would produce no visible effect ; the
question is not of the effect of putting one bar to the cage, but
a multitude. The thing to be strongly suspected is, that land
is cultivated in proportion to the degree of satisfaction procured
to the owner or cultivator in the way he likes best. And this
constitutes an objection to the conclusion to which the author
appears to come upon Irish absenteeism as distinguished from
English. The question is, whether the Irish produce, consist-
ing as it happens of articles of human food, is not produced
because it can be sold in the over-sea market ; and whether
there is any more certainty that if this was put a stop to, the
provisions would continue to be produced and be eaten by the
poor of Ireland at home, than that if the export of sugar and
rum was stopped from the West Indies, the present quantity
would continue to be produced and be given in punch to the
negroes, — or that a baker would improve the feeding of his
family, by stopping the exit of the bread that is fabricated within
his borders.

The Chapters on the '* Effect of Taxes" repeat the phsenome-
non of those on Foreign Trade. The author is manifestly beset
with all kinds of disputable opinions, such as an apprehension
of " a misplaced antipathy to taxation" [p. 259], and a persua-
sion that " in virtue of a sweeping and blindfold retrenchment,"
" the monarchy is shorn of its splendour ; the great officers of

the state stripped of their graceful and becoming dignity : the
** system of public instruction stinted of its needful allowances ;
** the requisite agency for the business of government crippled
" in all its departments ; our gallant warriors made to pine in
" sordid destitution ; science, in the Gothic barbarity of our
" times, unfostered and unrewarded ; in a word, the glory and
" substantial interests of the nation sacrificed." He beheves
we live under *' a regime of hard and hunger-bitten economy,
" [p. 261] before v/hose remorseless pruning hook, lie withering
*' and dissevered from their stem, the noblest interests of the
*' commonwealth ; a vehement outrageous parsimony which,
*' under the guise of patriotism, so reigns and ravens over the
" whole length and breadth of the land, and cares not though

both religion and philosophy should expire, if but some
** wretched item of shred and of candle-end should be gained
" by the sacrifice ;" a conclusion which may be ascribed in a
great degree to the misfortune of having been some weeks too
early for the appearance of Mr. Eflingham Wilson's Extraor-
dinary Black Book," a wonderful conductor of grief and silent
carrier-off of apprehensions on the subject of complaint. This
is manifestly no novus homo from the Political Unions ; yet he

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

193

comes to the astonishing conclusions, that it is quite the wis-
" dom of our statesmen, in this particular instance, to proceed
*' in the current of the general feeling" [p. 299] ; and, that
though he is "far from the opinion, t\\dii vox populi, \^ vox Dei,
" yet, on the present question, it so happens, that the demand
** of the many, runs in the direction which is best suited, both
to their own interests and the interests of all." He is con-
vinced that

^ it were no small advantage if landlords were made to bear the
whole burdens of the state ostensibly, as they do really ; that the im-
portance, the paramount importance, of landed weaith and of the
landed interest^ would stand forth, nakedly and without disguise, to
the recognition of all men. So that it were well for them, if com-
pelled, even though against their will, to pay all taxes. The men
who hold in their hand the necessaries of life, have the obvious su-
periority over the men who but minister the superfluities or the com-
forts. They have the natural ascendancy ; and we think it whole-
some and befitting, that they should have the political ascendancy
also. We hold it the most exceptionable feature in the modern
schema of representation, as being a violation of the rightful and
natural order, that the agricultural interest is not sufficiently repre-
sented in parliament. We think, that^ in partitioning the matter be-
tween the landed and the commercial, the supreme importance of the
one, and the merely subordinate or subservient character of the other,
have not been enough adverted to. But, perhaps, the very violence
thus done to the natural propriety of things, may speed the manifesta-
tion of the truth upon this subject. The proprietors of the soil have
been a vast deal too tardy in learning the lessons which relate both to
their own and their country's well-being. It is better that the repeal
of the corn laws, and a reformed system of finance, should both be
forced upon them. They will maintain their ground notwithstanding.
They may be overborne for a season ; but their indestructible wealth
will at length appear manifest to all men, as being that which consti-
tutes the main strength and support of the nation. It will even make
head against the inequalities of our representative system, and secure
for them, in opposition to every device and every provision in the
framework of our constituency, the ascendancy in parliament — an
ascendancy which will the more readily be deferred to, when it be-
comes clear as day, that they indeed bear all the burdens of the com-
monwealth. The lords of the soil, we repeat, are, naturally and pro-
perly, the lords of the ascendant.' — p, 301.

There really does seem some reason to apprehend, that the
Political Unions will be obliged to interfere on behalf of the
landlords. They will at all events give their votes and interest
towards the agricultural body being in an especial manner re-
presented in parliament, if the landlords will give good security
for agreeing to be compelled, even though against their will,
to pay all taxes." The objection to their political ascendancy

VOL. II. N

194 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy.

has always been, that they used it, like all other ascendancies,
to oppress their neighbours. If they will agree to an ascen-
dancy that shall be no ascendancy, the bargain shall be struck
directly. But some care must positively be taken of the land-
lords. The doubt is, whether it be so absolutely and irrefragably
true, that the landlords do always really bear the whole bur-
dens of the state. If they do, it is a most proper provision of
nature. But since, if they do, the community c^n lose nothing
by the proposal, — the community will be content with the land-
lords paying the nominal portion of taxes which would befall
them, under a state of things where every man should be allowed
to sell the labour of his hands for what he likes best, and an
equitable partition of the public expenses afterwards. But
even if it should be strictly true, that nature has ruled and
provided that all taxes shall in the end fall on the thing called
rent, it does not appear why the land-owners should thereupon
assume to themselves any pre-eminence over the rest of the
community. In the case, for example, of a society which
should proceed to take possession of a new-found territory, it
does not clearly and luminously emerge, upon v/hat principle it
should be estabhshed, that the residuary owners of what nature
leaves them out of the rents that are to be, are thereby to be
seated on any particular bench of honour, above those who may
attain to holding an equal fraction of the aggregate wealth
through the instrumentality of any other agency. It shall be
conceded fully, that the residue of the rent shall be considered a
fair prize in the lottery of industry as much as in other cases ;
but it is not evident why it should be considered more than in
other cases. There are some persons who have not a distinct
vision even of the fact of the equality ; it might be dangerous,
therefore, to urge them with the claim for a superiority. And
the claim urged is manifestly only the argument used to the
lion in the fable. Allow the lions to be the statuaries for a sea-
son, and it shall soon be seen who is uppermost. Allow us to
rob the landed interest for seventeen years as they have been
allowed to rob us ; — give us leave to prevent them by Act of
Parliament from selling the produce of their estates in open
market, and to tax them in order to enable us the manufac-
turers to purchase more corn with our products from abroad ; —
and we will demonstrate in the twinkling of an eye, the priority
and natural ascendancy of manufactures, and the merely sub-
ordinate and subservient character of the landed interest. The
whole argument is founded on the event of a race in wrong,
and may be turned end for end by only supposing the other
horse had won.

The Chapter on " Tithes" appears to accord in the main with

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy. 195

the representation, that the effect of the mode of collection by
tithes " may be compared to the effect of a convulsion which at
some period of remote antiquity should have sunk a certain part
of the land of the country into the sea*." Such a circumstance
would cause Britain to be at this moment a less Britain than
would otherwise have been the case, by a proportionate part of
her territory, population, and everything else ; bu lit will not
be contended that there would be at this moment an} increase
in the price of corn. And by the converse of the reasoning, if
all this land should rise again out of the sea, the population
would finally be increased, but the increased cheapness of corn
would only be for a time. Tn fact the facility of obtaining food
and the increase of population, are the two circumstances, of
which one is always destined to eat up the other.

But there appears some danger of a fallacy on this subject,
like that of Swift's servant when he omitted to clean his mas-
ter's boots. " They would soon be dirty again," said John.

We should soon be hungry again," said his master, when he
pushed past John's diversoria nota in retaliation. It does not
follow, that because the effect of a given thing can be proved
to be only temporary, it is therefore to be overlooked ; the best
dinner that ever was eaten is precisely in this predicament.
The very intent and object of nature may be, that the thing or
something like it should be repeated toties quoties. The most
important point in all political mathematics at the present con-
juncture of the world, is to establish and popularize the truth,
that the comfort of the world depends on a continual chase
after new markets for procuring corn, as it does after new din-
ners. The beef of today must form no excuse for going with-
out the mutton of tomorrow ; and the welfare of the concerned
depends on an uninterrupted succession of similar phaenomena.
The gains to the labouring classes from the commutation of
tithes might be only a fortnight's dinners ; but the life of man
is by a succession of such things, and why should not this
count for part ? If any man expects to go in the strength of
that meat for ever, he is wrong ; but does that make any reason
why the mess should be rejected if it can be had?

The Chapter on Productive and Unproductive Labour" may
be considered as having established, what many persons have
long suspected, the unprofitableness of the distinction conveyed
under those terms. The nearest to an excuse that can be made
for their application, is that they arose out of an indistinct
notion of labour well and ill employed. But if this was what

• See Westminster Review for 1 April, 1832 Cp. 85 of the present Volume).
Article on Improvement of Condition of the Clergy.

N 2

196 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

was meant, it should have been said so. A soldier, for in-
stance, should have been attacked as producing mischief when
mischievously directed, and not as producing nothing. The
whole of this Chapter is valuable to those who desire in-
structive reading, and in many parts has more *' mirth" in it
than can commonly be compressed into a subject of political
economy.

The Chapter on the " Law of Primogeniture" presents an
instance of a species of inaccuracy traceable in some of the
preceding divisions, as for example those on Taxes and on
Tithes, — which is that of confounding the evil which people do
charge against a practice or an institution, with the evil which
they do not. Thus in the case of Taxes, very few persons in
the present day believe that the removal of taxation would
cause a direct increase of aggregate employment for the work-
ing classes, any more than they believe that such an effect is to
be produced by levying money by taxation to be expended in
building useless palaces or in digging ditches and fiUing them
up again ; and for the same reason, namely that all that in any
of these cases is added to employment in some quarter or
direction, must be taken off in some other. IBut they say that
the individuals taxed unnecessarily or for purposes in which
they have no interest or concern, are robbed as they would be
by taking the money from them on the highroad; and this it is
that they maintain to be an evil, and they must not be diverted
from it by starting the other hare to hunt instead. So again
in the case of Tithes, the thinking part of the public does not
need to be told, that in one sense it may be indifferent to the
working classes in the aggregate, whether certain large reve-
nues are to be expended by one set of men or by some other ;
but this verity must not be impressed upon them to the ob-
scuring of the considerations, that the mode of collecting these
revenues has in it something peculiarly hostile to the well-
being of all concerned, and that the continuation of these reve-
nues altogether, after a decent regard for existing interests
and expectations, is as completely subordinate to the opinion of
the community expressed through its legislature on the ad-
viseableness of the same, as is the continuation of the pay of a
file of musqueteers. A stout resistance should always be made
to the mixing up the attacked with the unattacked ; and one
of the best services that can be done to the militant commu-
nity, is to point out to them with clearness what it is they are
going to attack and what to let alone. In short there must be
no shots thrown away ; and he is no friend who invites to such
an operation. On the law of Primogeniture, in the same
manner, there is no necessity to insist upon the fact, that ten

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy, 19!r

thousand a-year in the hands of one son would only be a
thousand a-year apiece in the hands of ten, and that this
would not make the sum more than it was before. But in the
first place there is the direct consequence, that the nine junior
sons are injured by the rule ; and in the next, there is the in-
direct consequence, of vastly greater importance to the public
than the other, that the influence and power thus created in
the hands of the elder brother, are employed to procure a main-
tenance for the younger brothers out of the pockets of the public.
This is clearly the end and the organized plan of the system of
primogeniture ; the ten thousand a-year is to be concentrated in
the hands of the eldest son, that it may act as a battering-ram
for procuring a thousand a-year for each of the others or as
much of it as may be found practicable, by entry into the public
pantry and appropriation of the victual that is therein

The argument for the law of primogeniture that is founded
on the greater facility of raising taxes on the larger properties,
may be placed in the class of things considered doubtful. It
appears to amount to this ; — Cut off the thousand a-year from
each of the younger sons altogether, and it will be easier to
levy a thousand a-year from the man of ten thousand than it
would be to levy ten sums of a hundred from ten men of a
thousand a-year each. If the younger son had a thousand
a-year, he would be wonderfully tenacious of the odd hundred,
and it would indeed be something like cruelty to take a hun-
dred pounds from a man who was only to have nine hundred
left; therefore remedy the evil by giving him none at all. The
case is particularly recommended to all the younger sons in
the community ; who, if they happen to be dissatisfied with
the share that befalls them of the public plunder, will probably
be long before they see the merit of the law on this point in its
full brilliance. The whole of the further inferences seem to
demand the same kind of scrutiny. It is exceedingly difficult
to get taxes from the people at large. As a remedy therefore,
take from them ten times the amount of the desired taxes, by
causing it to accumulate in the hands of somebody else, — and

* This was never clearly developed with application to the case of Great
Britain, till it was done in the remarl<able article entitled de la charte selon
l'aristocratie in the Constitutionnel of Sept. 4, 1829. The original and a trans-
lation were inserted in the Westminster Review for 1 Oct. 1829 [p. 174 of Vol. I.
of the present work], and were republished by the author of the '* Political Re-
gister," which was no mean compliment in more respects than one. There
would be nothing unreasonable in affirming, that this article in the Consti-
tutionnel may be counted among the co-operating causes which produced the
call for Reform in Great Britain, and as such presents an example of the re-
flected effect on the interests of one country, which may be produced by min-
gling in the politics of another.

198 Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy,

you will find this other somebody wonderfully more willing to
consent, to pay the tenth part and keep the other nine. It cer-
tainly deserves some examination, whether as regards the in-
terest of the people at large, this is not making shoes by cut-
ting them out of boots.

On the subject of "Emigration," it may be suspected to be
questionable, whether [p. 387] the country is in a distempered
condition, which is in the state of a vessel constantly running
over." Have not all vessels run over since Noah's ? And is
there not every appearance, that the process of nature hitherto,
which is some earnest of the plan that is to come, has been to
push forward population from the first occupied parts of the
habitable globe into the others ? If population had always re-
mained '*in a state somewhat short of fulness," we should have
been living among the ruins of the ark ; for nothing but want
of room ever induced the existing tenantry to quit. The point
for sensible men to aim at, is manifestly to have just so much
emigration as shall be forced upon them after their own best
exertions to prevent it ; without allowing either Shem, Ham,
or Japhet to hurry the process by the prohibition of obtaining
food where it can be had. The suffering which nature has
designed for us is calculable and tolerable, softened by a thou-
sand circumstances of mitigation tin d dilution. An Act of Par-
liament is what crowds the evil intended for eternity, into the
interval between the first and final reading of a Corn Bill.

But if on the one hand a country is not to be pronounced in
an unhealthy state on evidence of the existence of emigration,
so neither on the other hand is the necessity for emigration
to be unnecessarily increased to please the landlords. The
plot of these last, is manifestly to make the English people
breed for exportation, like the negroes in some States in
America. They cannot hinder the multiplying, and they are
afraid to encounter the consequences of keeping all at home.
They know the cage would burst, and the makers of the law
that constitutes the boundary be called to a severe reckoning ;
and therefore they have hit upon the middle term, of trying to
make the landlord-ridden people of England breed for trans-
portation. Every man whom the existing state of law obUges
to emigrate, is an innocent man robbed by law till he embraces
transportation as the lesser evil. It has long been a toast of
the oppressors, that " those who do not like the land may leave
it and they have so shaped their policy, as to put their wish
in the readiest way of execution.

The Compulsory Provision for the Poor" has long been
known to be inefficient as the means of diminishing, and conse-
quently of relieving, poverty. But there is one new question

Dr. Chalmers on Political Economy. 199

to determine, which is whether a long-sighted Providence has
not tacked the poor-laws to the landlords' backs as the instru-
ment of retributive justice. The landlords have made a law to
prevent the manufacturers from selling their wares in 'the
market ; and the manufacturers will justly retaliate when they
have the power, by imposing a prohibition of a corresponding
nature on the landlords. But when the landlords made this
law, they forgot that by a previous law they were saddled with
the necessity of maintaining the poor they made. No prospect
upon earth is so delightful, as seeing knavery and cruelty dis-
appointed If by any combination of circumstances it were
possible, that in the actual state of things the landlords could
make any attempt to get rid of the poor-laws, it would justify a
division of their property by the poor. The parish relief is the
poor man's right and his honourable fee simple, because it is
only in consequence of having been foully and cruelly robbed
that he is reduced to the necessity of taking it. It is his com-
pensation, — a miserable one, but all he has, — for having been
plundered of the first of human rights, the right which a man
has of disposing of the labour of his hands. It is to escape the
poor-rates, that the oppressors are anxious to encourage emigra-
tion. It only remains to be seen whether the poor of this coun-
try are simple enough to give into the plot. If they are, a few
years more of Sunday schools will put an end to it.

It is on this view of the subject, that the decision of the
question of the introduction of poor-rates into Ireland seems to
turn. Are the Irish landlords of such a description or not, that
it would be useful to stipulate, that the poor they may make by
misgovernment, they shall be obliged to keep ? That poor-rates
have no direct effect to diminish poverty, may be readily allowed ;
but have they not an indirect effect, by making the artificial
creators of the public misery finally the sufferers by the conse-
quences of their own acts ?

On the Chapter on the Education of the People," it is
desired to be brief, and to displease nobody. The great objec-
tion to be urged against the premises on which it is founded, is
that the attempt "to demonstrate the futility of every expedient,
which a mere political economy can suggest for the permanent
well-being of a community," partakes of the same weakness
as an attempt to demonstrate the futility of a succession of good
dinners. There is possibility that it has been overlooked, that
though one expedient and one dinner may be ineffectual to per-
manent good, a succession may form a chain, of which very
different things may be predicated ; and still there may always
be room enough for everything that can be done to improve the
conduct and discretion of the people. The matter for regret is,

200

Renewal of Bank Charter,

that the two great modes of improvement should not always
agree to go on together, — the poHtical economist to do what
may be done for the diminution of temporal evils, and the reli-
gious philosopher to exert himself to teach mankind the best
mode of supporting such as will be certain to remain.

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1832.

Art. XIII. — 1. Elementary Propositions on the Currency. With Addt'
tions, showing their application to the present Times, By Henry
Drummond. — Fourth Edition, Londonj Ridgway. 1826. pp. 69.

2. Facts relative to the Bank of England, explaining the Nature and
Influence of the Bank Charter ; with a View of the Causes and
Consequences of the Suspension and Restoration of the use of
Standard Coin. — London ; Westley, Effingham Wilson, pp. 84.

3. A Legal Statement of the Real Position of the Government, with
relation to the Bank of England. By Samuel Wells, Esq.,
Barrister at Law, and Register to the Honourable the Corpora-
tion of the Bedford Level. — London ; Effingham Wilson. 1832.
pp. 52.

4. Historical Sketch of the Bank of England : with an Examination
of the Question as to the Prolongation of the Exclusive Privileges of
that Establishment. — London; Longman and Co. 1831. pp. 77,

¥N most cases of dispute it happens that there is a right and a
^ wrong ; and that an individual Vv^ho feels moved to endeavour
to oppose the wrong, may have the advantage of seeing the
standard of the right erected in some quarter, whither he may
transport his adherence and his contributions. But in the pre-
sent case it is to be feared, that there is as yet scarcely anything
ostensibly and visibly in the field, except the clashing of two
clamorous v/rongs. When a portion of the public property is
doomed to be sacrificed to what is technically termed a job, no
plan can be better conceived for securing success, than the
setting up two rival jobs to fight each other, and so puzzle and
distract the attention of the public who are to sulfer." In
the actual instance, there is the Bank of England job, and there
is the Country Bankers' job. Both are ivrongs ; but it is too
much to expect from the past circumstances of the country,
that it should be able to see through the mystification of a
combat between the two, or discern that it is in reality only a
struggle between interests equally hostile to the community.
And as there are certain probabilities on the face of things,
which lead to the expectation that the community may be better
able to understand and to direct its own interests at some coming
time than now, a proportionate ardour is displayed to get a

Renewal of Bank Charter »

201

lease of mischief settled in some way at the present, and " con-
serve" at least some ten years' profits of the evils. There is
perhaps but little chance of hindering this ; the wrong has us
at a disadvantage ; the community is too young in the habit of
attending to its own affairs, and the wrong too old, to leave
much hope of prevention for the present. But it is pleasant in
such a case, to get hold of any number of men however small,
and teach them to say, " Now, see, the hand goes down into our
pockets ; and now the fingers twine and grapple with our purse-
strings ; and now the purse comes slowly forth, like some re-
luctant eel extracted from his cave, and glads the spoiler with
its glittering folds.''

The groundwork of all knowledge of this nature, is for a man
to convince himself thoroughly and entirely of the fact, that any
nation in a tolerably advanced state of civilisation has the power
of dispensing with the expense of a metallic currency, by the
substitution of one of leather or paper or some equally cheap
materia], in the same manner as an individual can dispense with
gold and silver drinking-vessels by the substitution of glass.
Waive all questions of the ultimate poUcy of this ; enter for the
present into no inquiries touching the magnitude of the adven-
titious obstacles that may arise ; but leave all these to be duly
estimated to the last scruple in the proper place. Let it be
admitted as for future establishment, that there may be danger
of the glass inflicting wounds upon the mouths of the drinkers,
that maid-servants may let it fall and footmen scratch it by
the roughness of their purgation, that it may crack under the
influence of heat and leave us disappointed of the expected
tumbler of warm invigoration ; let all these pains and perils be
put by in a parenthesis, and attach yourself to the simple fact,
that there is an initial possibility for a man to furnish his table
with glass, and put the price of the silver tankards of his
ancestors into his own peculiar pocket. So in the case of
money, look round upon the evidence there is, — an evidence not
made for the occasion, but furnished by the enemy in the course
of his past operations upon the public property, — that a leather
or a paper money, openly declared to be irrecoverable from the
government that issues it except as it may be proffered in dis-
charge of taxes, will nevertheless maintain a certain value in
exchange, and that the magnitude of the value possessed by
each particular scrap and portion, will be determined by that
which is required to make the whole money in circulation
possess the value of the quantity of gold or silver or convenient
goods of any kind, which would be wanted in the existing state
and condition of the society, to form an instrument or medium
of exchange,— and consequently a/zz/ numerical quantity of this

202

Benewal of Bank Charter.

money (excepting quantities so small as to be incompetent to the
general object through the want of subdivision, or in other words
the absence of small change) will always be of the same total
value (surrounding circumstances of all kinds supposed un-
altered), any addition to the mass being absorbed by a^ pro-
portionate depreciation in the value of each of the component
parts in the pockets of the holders of the total currency, and
any diminution counteracted by a proportionate rise. That
this is true, has been exemplified by public experience; and for
those who are desirous to see the how^ the when, and the where
of all these effects, painfully dissected and laid out as on the
table of a demonstrator of anatomy, the thing has been done,
and without pretence of refutation or denial, in the earliest
Number of the present periodical work*, and disseminated in the
cheapest form, with curious steering through the shoals and
quicksands with which the robber-made laws of this country
have surrounded the attempt to communicate anything useful
at small expense, and specially and above all to bring knowledge
to the level of the pockets of the poor.

This step being conceded, it is plain that an honest govern-
ment has one of two things to do. Either it may determine, if it
thinks it sees cause, to keep to the silver tankards, and use none
but the most expensive medium ; or it may substitute the cheaper
instrument, applying the price of the old one to the use of the
people who pay for it, and whose property it strictly is. But
the government of this robber-ridden country has done neither ;
nor is there as yet any outward visible sign, that the existing
administration is in a way of making any material alterations.
The government neither kept to the expensive material, nor
substituted the cheaper one and accounted for the difference to
the owners ; but it substituted the cheaper one, and set up the
difference to be scrambled for, by anybody who would proffer the
government corrupt assistance in return. It took the millions
which were the value of the plate the people had paid for, and
instead of accounting for them to the people, it went with them
into the corruption-bazaar, and sold them for the means of in-
flicting further mischief on the community. The customers it
found, were precisely the two sets of persons who are at this
moment disputing as if the truth lay between them ; — the thing
called the Bank of England, and the country bankers. Each of
these bought the privilege of supplying a portion of the glasses
for the people's use, and pocketing the value of so many silver
tankards in return. And what they paid in, was the coin that

* The Article on the Instrument of Exchange in the Westminster Review for
1 January, 1825. (See Appendix.^ Published separately, Price M.

Renewal of Bank Charter.

203

all public injuries are paid in, — corrupt support. Does anybody
imagine that a grasping and money-taking government,— a
government harassed and worried with a litter of aristocracy, to
which the swinish multitude that besets an overburned sow is
but a type of barrenness, — does anybody surmise that such a
government gave millions away for love ?

Supposing an honest government to have determined on
issuing paper money, what it would have done would clearly
have been, to have appointed an office, a Bank (for that would
have been a natural name enough), which should have issued
the paper to the extent the same honest government should have
directed, by applying it to the discharge of the current expenses
of the state, and at the same time appropriating corresponding
sums out of the produce of the taxes to the relief and credit
of the community : — for w^hich the palpable and ready m.ethod,
in the existing condition of this country and most other
countries, would have been the buying up a portion of the public
debt, and taking off taxes to the amount of the interest. Every-
body can see that this would have been a fair operation, an
honest operation, a creditable operation, and one that would
bear the light ; and by its approximation to this, must every
other act be measured.

The extent to wiiich such a Bank should be directed to issue
paper, would clearly be, to the greatest extent at which a given
particle of paper would buy in the market an assigned quan-
tity of some commodity which experience has proved to be not
liable to sudden fluctuations, and consequently to be a conve-
nient standard of value. The experience of all ages has pointed
to gold, as being the most convenient commodity for this pur-
pose ; the paper, therefore, should be issued to the extent at
which a given particle (suppose the pound-note) would purchase
in the market an assigned quantity (suppose, for brevity, a
quarter of an ounce) of pure gold, or of gold in some assignable
state of fineness. If it should be found at any time that a
pound-note would buy more than a quarter of an ounce of gold
(or the market price of gold fell below 4/. an ounce), it would
be a sign that the paper might be increased ; and if it should
be found that the pound-note would buy less (or the market
price of gold had risen above 4/. an ounce), it would be a proof
that the paper was too much. In the first case, there would
be manifestly no difficulty in issuing more, and applying the
proceeds as before. In the second case (supposing it likely to
occur where there should have been an honest intention not to
bring it on by known over-issues), it would be just as easy to
restore the proper price by buying up a portion of the paper
in circulation. The readiest way to provide for such an opera-

204

Renewal of Bank Charter,

tion, would be by applying the amount received for the paper
currency, or some portion of it, to something of the nature of a
sinking-fund ; and then, if in spite of precautions the paper
in circulation should be ever found too much, carrying a portion
of the stock of this sinking-fund into the market again, and
burning or destroying the paper received for it unless reserved
for the chance of being wanted for future issue, wouhl reduce
the quantity in circulation. But throughout the whole of this,
reservation may be made of the question, whether it is necessary
to make provision for any such phsenomenon at all, provided
always security can be had against wilful over-issues.

And here is made a principal point of resistance, with the
friends of the present state of things. Who can provide secu-
rity against over-issues 9 Answer, Anybody, if he chuses.
Nobody can provide against over-issues, if the thing is to be
wrapt up in mystery and concealment. Nobody can provide
against over-issues, if the process is to be made a darkling job
in the hands of men who are to be interested in doing wrong.
Who can prevent his apprentice from robbing his till ? Who
can keep thieves out of his strong-box, or pigs out of his
potatoe-garden ? Who can hinder flies from flying down his
throat ? Anybody, if he chuses to shut his mouth. If he does
not, he must be assumed to belong by nature and by instinct,
to the genus fly-catcher. It is manifest he does it because he
intends to do it. But it is absurd, because he does not stop it,
to state that there is a physical difficulty in preventing the
consummation. Direct by Act of Parliament that a statement
of the notes in circulation shall be laid on the table of the
House of Commons at the commencement of every session,
and at any other time when the same shall be called for in the
House in the ordinary manner ; direct further that the money
price of gold shall be published weekly by authority, as perhaps
is already done in the Gazette or the Price Current ; decree
that there shall be no increase to the paper in circulation but
by an Order in Council, upon evidence produced of the price
of gold having been at least [sixpence] per ounce below the
standard price, on the average of the weekly prices of at least
twelve months previous*, — that the increase shall be only
such as shall be collected from taking the proportion, of the

* Precise numbers in a case of this kind are always supposed to be for re-
vision^nd after-examination. But the term of tv/elve months was fixed upon,
because it seems exceedingly probable that there might be a natural fluctuation
in the value of paper arising from the different demand for it at different sea-
sons of the year. This it will perhaps be urged, would make it cheaper to pay
debts at one season of the year than at another. And is this anything but what
exists now ? Has]not every man his convenient season for paying money and
the contrary ?

Renewal of Bank Charter.

205

difference below the standard price, to that average price*, —
and that the proceeds shall be applied to the reduction of the
public debt ; inflict the penalties of forgery on all concerned,
in the event of any issue not authenticated by Act of Parliament
as directed ; and leave all this open in all its parts to the per-
petual visitation and examination of a House of Commons
consisting of real delegates of the people. Do this, and see
what chance there will be for the iiies going down any-
body's throat afterwards. If it is not done, — if the mouth is
wilfully left open, — there w^ll be no doubt of the flies going
down in any quantity ; but let no man say, it was for want of
a way to hinder it.

If it is urged that all this is trouble ; — everything is trouble.
And in this case there are the people's millions at stake.
Trouble enough can be taken for a grey hen ; it would be
thought no trouble to transport the man who should take one
in certain ways unpleasing to the squirearchy, nor to string up
any number of the heges who should in other ways offend to
the amount of some five shillings each. Divide, therefore, the
people's millions by five shillings or a grey hen, and it will
give some measure of the occasion there is for calling out
trouble here.

What such a Bank would have to do, would be to keep the
accounts always ready to be furnished to parliament ; to supply
new paper in the place of such as should be returned in a state
not fit for re- issuing ; and to do in fact what every man who
ever kept a clerk or was one, can perfectly conceive. For this
it is clear the agents must be paid ; and only for this. The
annual interest of the value of the mxCtallic currency (suppose
two millions a-year) would be what must be set to the credit
of the public on one side, and the annual expense of this bank-
ing department on the other ; and the difference would be the
annual gain of the community. Can anybody suppose that
such a department could not be conducted for 200,000/. a
year ? Nine-tenths, therefore, of the net interest, or a million
and four-fiftlis of a million, might have been the annual saving
to the community. What a rout is made about a million and
four-fifths annually, if the question is of applying it to an
honest purpose ! What a trivial thing it passes for, when the
question is of allowing it to slip down the gulph of public
wrong !

The government did make a Bank, but it was nothing like

* For example, if the average price had fallen from Al. to 3/. 195. 6(i., the
proportion would be that of ^d. to 3^. 19s. 6rf., or 1 to 159 ; or the paper ac-
tually in circulation should be increased by a 159th part. The same rule would
hold good too, in the event of occasion to withdraw paper.

206

Renewal of Bank Charter,

such a Bank as this. Ascertain what the one does, and what
the other ; settle what the one costs, and what the other ; and
the difference is job. Fancy that the VictuaUing Office, instead
of being an office for the mere buying of pork and beef for the
public service, and keeping the accounts of the receipts and
issues, was a collection of pork-jobbers, — a society existing
for the express purpose among others, of furnishing the govern-
ment with the means of supporting and directing armies without
being checked by the power of the Commons over the issue of
supplies, and to which, in consequence, the government had
actually got in debt to the amount of seventeen millions sterling.
Such a Victualling Office would clearly be a nuisance, a thing
to be attacked with all the means that God and nature may
have placed in the people's power, — a thing the contrivers and
inventors of which, if they had not already gone to what the
scripture would term " their place," ought to be high up hung
for a memorial for ever ; — and the other is like unto it. It is
an open, crying evil ; an invention fitted and strung for the
purpose of doing injury to the community, and of removing
those checks on the rapine and tyranny of rulers, in which the
people have been foolishly induced to put their trust. And this
nuisance it is, which it is in plot and progress to continue upon
us for a term of years, by means of the rump of an unreformed
parliament, which has declared and avowed itself to be no
representation of the people, but of the illegal influence of the
Peers. The only resource is, that if the attempt should be
made with a probability of carrying it through the forms, it
should be attended by a protest on the part of the minority,
that the question of reversal shall be among the first moved
in a reformed parliament, and that the people will instruct their
delegates to make such resistance upon other points, as shall
overcome the advantage the enemy may possess in having got
the mischief past the snap-lock of the Lords. The object is a
very fair one, — that of hindering the community from being
saddled with a ten years' nuisance by the trick of bringing the
question before an unreformed parliament ; and those who will
the trick, will all the consequences.

The burden of the Bank. And next comes the burden of the
country bankers. On which the first observation is, that the
trade of a banker as at present practised, is divisible into two
parts ; one, the lending, discounting, and performing various
other operations, with his oion money ; the other, the doing all
this with paper of his own coining, which is doing \iwithmoney
he takes from other people. Every note a private banker is
allowed to issue, is so much of the price of the silver tankards
the people have paid for, run off with by the private banker.

Renewal of Bank Charter,

207

instead of being applied to the reduction of the people's debt or
the diminution of the people's taxes. Where does anybody-
suppose the metallic currency came from, and who paid for it?
Who paid for the metal that composed it ; or was it by some
art got for nothing? Who but those who pay for all, the toiling,
sweating, people ? It is true that when paper money is issued,
the metal returns silently to the uses of bullion, and this indi-
vidual act produces no new loss to the holder or to the people ;
the man who sells a coin as bullion, gets what serves his pur-
pose in return. In the same way when a man's silver tankards
are exchanged for glass, this individual act produces no new
loss to the man. But does this form any reason why the value
of the tankards he originally paid for should be taken by
somebody else? The original price, is what he has a right to
call for. Few people are so stupid as not to see through this ;
and there is not one man in a thousand that sees through the
other. Just wait and see, whether the country bankers are
not allowed by parliament to take the people's millions, as
quietly as if it were an act of virtue. The plea put forward
will be, that there must be a free trade in money. Why should
there be a free trade in the people^s money ? Why is there
not a free trade in the tar and pitch out of the people's dock-
yards, or the pork and beef out of their Victualling Office ?
The term would be just as applicable. The issuing of private
paper is not a trade, nor industry, in any sense but as those
terms might be applied to a trade and industry which should
consist in employing carts to wheel the public stores out of the
dock-yards for private use. Free-trade may be a good thing ;
but this is free-booting. It labours under the original vice,
that the whole subject matter of the trade that is to be, is in
the first instance to be taken causeless from the owners.
It is true that the owners are everybody ; and therefore
confidence is felt in the universally acknowledged difficulty
of preventing public injury. The intended takers too are
wide and influential classes ; and what is worse is, they have
the means of inducing numerous other classes to join with them,
from the expectations of personal profit they hold out. They
say to the insolvent manufacturers and rack-rented farmers,
*' Would it not be a snug thing, if I could take forty thousand
pounds from the public by making paper money, and lend you
half of it i*" And the manufacturers and farmers of course
jump at the bait, as they wwld jump at the proposal of having
the same number of casks of pitch out of the dock-yards, or of
pork out of the Victualling Office, if they could be as perfectly
sure that neither hanging nor transportation was to be at the
end of it. And nobody doubts either, that when the manufac-

208

Renewal of Bank Charter,

turers and farmers get possession of this twenty thousand
pounds, they will make some show with it. It would be very
odd if they did not ; and the show thus made, is to be called
national prosperity. The theory in fact is this ; ** Take money
from the public, and you will be astonished to see what wealth
and greatness will grow out of it ; you have no idea what nice
things men will make, if you will only let them take money out
of the public purse to pay for them." It is the secret of modern
times, that taking money from one man to give to another,
is the procreation of wealth. The whole explanation of the pros-
perity arising from the permission of private bank-notes, lies in
this one artifice, — pointing to the expenditure of the money taken
from somebody else, and calling it prosperity. It is as if
certain individuals should be allowed to set up a toll on the
highway and spend the proceeds on their private enterprises ;
and then somebody should point to the results and say, See
what prodigious wealth, arising out of that wonderful national
discovery, of raising it by tolls on the highway." All the
benefits, for instance, asserted to have arisen from the permis-
sion of small notes in Scotland, were nothing but allowing
certain Scotchmen to take part of the public millions and
divide them with their customers, and then puffing off the
results as public gain. If a Scotch farmer or manufacturer has
tiom'ished by it, as why should he not, — some English one has
been taxed into the poor-house to answer it.

This has all gone on the supposition, that the private banker
merely substitutes his paper for what ought to be the people's
paper, and that depreciation is prevented ])y his being obliged
to pay in gold upon demand. But if, by any of the artifices of
which specimens are not far to seek, he can issue without being
directly or indirectly obliged to pay in gold,— -then a new source
is open to him, and he carries on what he calls his tradej with
money levied out of the pockets of all the holders of the circu-
lating medium in the country. Every note he issues under
such circumstances, produces a depreciation which sinks the
value of the whole increased medium in circulation, to the value
of what there was before ; and consequently all the pretended
benefits to the borrowers or to trade, are specimens of the fallacy
described, only with the change of the am.ount being taken
from the public by the intervention of a fall in the value of the
money in their pockets.

This is all reducible to the axiom, that what is taken from a
crowd, is taken from nobody. That any set of men may get
rich, by stripping one another. That many small quantities,
are not equal to the large one which is their sum. That twelve
pennies do not make a shilling ; and that by depriving men of

Renewal of Bank Charter,

209

the pennies and collecting them into shillings, the public gains
the sum collected.

To the influence of the manufacturers and agriculturists who
are anxious to borrow other people's money, may be added the
influence of all the dishonest debtors in the country who are
anxious to pay their debts in a depreciated currency. Suppose
a man to have a bond debt for 100/., and that by some contri-
vance he can compass a depreciation of the currency which
shall make the same portion of his goods which will now sell
for four pound-notes sell for five ; and it becomes plain that he
will discharge his deljt with the goods that would have previ-
ously sold for 80/., instead of what would have sold for 100/.
There is no wonder that multitudes of men desire to do this.
Their usual plea is, that the value of money was raised at the
return to cash payments. But they take care to forget, that
if it was raised, it was because it had first been fraudulently
lowered ; and that the correction of a fraud, is not fraud but
justice. Their artifice is the same commemorated in rural
annals, as practised by the man who pretended to divide his
guineas with his wife. " There is one for me, and one for you ;"
and one for me, hitched in always the rustic plunderer, affect-
ing to mistake the sound of you for the inchoation instead of
the conclusion of a parallelism. This is precisely the argument
of our bad debtors ; that because there have been a pair of
changes already, there ought to be a third. As far as concerns
the question of paying the interest of the public debt, it has been
established in black and white, and without anybody's attempting
to dispute the items of the statement, that if the losses of the
fund-holders by Pitt's fraudulent depreciation had been from
time to time put into a banker s hands, and then put out to
interest and the interest made principal as an honest man would
do with the property of a ward, — and if this had been carried
on till the year 1821 (which was when the currency was restored
to its original value), and the fair interest or annual value of this
amount is calculated, and compared with what the fund- holders
have gained and are gaining annually now on such portions of
the debt as were contracted when money was of a less value
than at present ; — in other words, if what the fund-holders
have lost by being paid in money of a less value than the debts
were contracted in, be compared with what they have gained by
being paid in money of a greater value than the debts were con-
tracted in ; — the first will be the greatest^. This is matter of

* See Mushet's Tables for every Year. (Baldwin and Co.) But for a further
examination of the subject, suggesting an error in the calculations of Mr.
Mushet, and stating the value of the difference (upwards of 422,000/. perannnm)^
see Westminster Review for April 1833, Article Equitable Adjustment and
VOL. II. O

210

Renewal of Bank Charter,

arithmetic, and nobody has ever attempted to destroy it by any-
thing like arithmetic in turn. The outcry therefore that is
raised on the ground of paying the fund-holders in a dear cur-
rency for debts contracted in a cheap, is altogether baseless in
fact. It is like the attempt to charge a man with the whole
debtor side of an account, to the exclusion of the circumstance
that there is another and a heavier sum upon the credit. It is
a simple, downright, bond fide mistatement and omission of
one half the truth ; a blunder, or error, or fallacy, which if
it begins in innocence, terminates in all the effects of wilful
wrong.

The fraudulent debtors, and the men who want to borrow
money taken from other people, will manifestly always compose
a large cry ; and they make themselves heard accordingly. The
statement here opposed to them, and which all who do not feel
a common interest are invited to examine and insist upon their
answering, is that all and every portion and fragment, of the
asserted benefits arising to the public from that part of the ope-
rations of private bankers which is to consist of coining paper
money, is a fallacy and a delusion, founded upon taking the
advantages which undeniably may arise to any man from being
allowed to take the money of other people, and representing
them as public gain, by keeping back the fact that the phseno-
menon is founded on the creation of loss in some other quarter.
Delusion of this kind is in truth the great secret of modern
politics ; nine-tenths of what politicans live by, consist in it.
And the statement must not be weakened, by mixing up with
it what is never stated. It is not at all denied, that the opera-
tions of private bankers, as separated from their coining paper
money, may do good. But these operations must be carried on
with their own money ; not with other people's.

To allow the public money to be run away with, is a great
evil ; but this is not all. There is no person at man's estate,
who has not witnessed intense and irremediable sufferings, —
flagrant and intolerable injuries, such as if they had happened
to himself would have utterly broken down his philosophy and
thrown him hopeless on the shoals of an interminable despond-
ency,— the savings of a life of mdustry dashed from the hands of
age, and infancy turned out to meet the storm like young birds
driven from their nest at the fancy of some lubbard school-
boy,— and all this because legislators had the ignorance or the
malevolence, to allow the grand right of the people to an honest
currency to be broken in upon. If a wretch under the impres-

Postscript, contained in a subsequent part of the present Yo\\in\Q.— Added in

Renewal of Bank Charter.

211

sion of want is led to coin a shilling, the world is up in arras to
hang him, because he has broken, forsooth, the king's prero-
gative. If a rich man, desiring to be richer, coins 100,000/. in
paper, the whole of which is taken out of the community's
pockets to begin with, — he shall be held a benefactor to his
country, and the parks and palaces he rears out of the posses-
sion of the money, be counted as so much gain to the dull com-
munity that fosters him. And if in addition to the use, he is
found on inquiry to have lost or made away with the princi-
pal, — he shall be sighed over as a man unfortunate in trade, —
lamentation shall be made upon the loss to the country-side, of
such a great stirrer-up of industry and prom.oter of the wealth
of all his neighbours, — and men with solemn faces shall lament,
that they have only three banks left or as the case may be, from
which they can now draw the breath of life and natural suste-
nance of commercial prosperity, consisting in the faculty of
borrowing other men's money without their consent, through
the intervention of the paper-monger.

Another point on which it is necessary to guard against being
charged with what is not asserted, is that it never has been '
stated, that private bankers can produce depreciation ; as long
at least as directly or indirectly they can be made to pay in
gold upon demand. This is not the charge. A man accused
of adultery, might has well go about to prove that he had done
no murder. The charge is not that they produce depreciation,
but that they take the use of the money that ought to be the
public's. The accusation is not that the man who has taken
my money has produced depreciation with it, but that he has
taken my money ; that it was mine and not his. and without any
question of whether he produced depreciation or not, was what
he had no right to take at all. The fault was with the govern-
ment that allowed it. It is to be hoped therefore a reformed
government will prove a better keeper of the country bankers'
consciences.

It has been intimated as a serious question, — though subordi-
nate in comparison of some of the others, — whether there would
be any absolute necessity or use, in making provision for call-
ing-in superfluous paper at all, provided that positive security
could be obtained for paper never being issued except in sub-
ordination to the proposed check. Nations on the v/hole do not
go backwards, but forwards ; a retrograde movement of the
value of a currency of given volume, could therefore only be
temporary. It maybe urged that a bad harvest (for example)
would cause gold to be in demand for the purpose of procuring
corn from abroad, and that this would cause the paper price of
gold to rise. To which the reply seems to be, Why should it
o 2

Beneioal of Bank Charter.

not f Where is the harm ; and how is anything to be mended,
by calling-in the paper till it rises to the temporarily increased
value of gold ? If gold bulUon rises in value because from
accidental and temporary circumstances it happens to be in de-
mand, why should the currency be meddled with, any more
than if the thing that had risen in price had happened to be
broad cloth ? A man who chanced to be wanting to gild a
cupola, might suffer loss from such a rise ; but nobody else
would suffer. On comparing this with what would have hap-
pened if the currency had been gold, the advantage would all
be on the side of the paper ; for in the case of a gold currency,
the demand for bullion would cause coins to be melted, and
the value in exchange of what were left would rise, whence
there would be a derangement of debts and credits, all debtors
being obliged to pay too much. The result therefore of the
proposed dfficulty, is to establish a decided advantage on the
side of paper.

Of the pamphlets on the subject, the most important from
the details into which it enters, as w^ell as from the reputation
of the individual understood to be the author, is the last. It
will be useful therefore to go into the objections urged against
the establishment of a National Bank, by which is meant a
" Bank established by Government, and responsible only to
it,'* in the same manner, it is presumed, as a Victualling Office
is an establishment for carrying on a public purpose of another
kind.

' Those who argue in favour of the establishment of a National
Bank, rely principally on the saving which they think it m'ght be
made to produce to the public. The interest of the capital of
14,686,000/. lent by the Bank of England to Government at 3 per
cent., amounts to 440^,000/. a year, there being besides, as already seen,
a sum of about 260,000/. a year paid to the Bank for managing the
public debt ; and it is contended that were a National Bank estab-
lished, both these sums, amounting together to 700,000/. a year, might
be saved to the public. It is clear, however, that the stamp duty of
about 80,000/. a year payable by the Bank of England, and the ex-
pense of managing a National Bank which might . probably be esti-
mated at 300,000/., making together 330.000/., must be deducted
from the above sum of 780,000/. ; and we believe we may safely add
to the deductions to be made from the supposed gains, a further sum
of 100,000/. a year for the expense to which the National Bank would
be put in procuring suppHes of bullion and coin, and in regulating
her issues ; so that the entire gain resulting from the supposed change
could not amount, on the most exaggerated estimate, to above
ll^.m^V—Uistorical Sketch of the Ba7ik of England, p. 57.

There appear some odd items in this, on both sides the

Renewal of Bank Charter,

213

question. Why is anybody to contend that the interest of the
14,686,000/. lent by the Bank of England to Government, is
to make part of the sums that are to be saved to the public ?
Was it ever contemplated, that this interest was to cease to be
paid upon a change of system ? Why, on the other hand, is the
80,000/. of stamp duty payable by the Bank of England, to be
placed to the side of sums to be lost upon a change? Does
anybody suppose the Bank gave this for love, or without being
in some way paid for it ? The further sum of 100,000/. a
year for procuring supplies of bullion and coin,'' would also be
non-existent, in a Bank which was to keep no store of either
bullion or coin. On examining these items, all the boys turn
out girls, and the girls boys. But there is more than this ;
which is, that the account omits and puts behind the door
altogether, the great source of gain for the sake of which a
national bank should be constructed, namely the saving of an
amount equal to the annual interest of the cost of a gold cur-
rency. It is the interest of some forty millions sterling, (ba-
ting such parts of it as may be saved or secured by the imper-
fect and half-witted ways already in practice), which is the
thing at stake. The rest are comparatively *' betel between
friends." If we are to have a gold currency, then no National
Bank is wanted at all ; and any pretence of one will be a job. If
we are not to have a gold currency, then the interest of the
cost of one, is what the government is bound to save.

^ But the more we consider this subject, the more are we satiisfied
that the establishment of a National Bank would be a most unwise
measure, and that instead of being productive of any advantage, it
could not fail to occasion very great loss and inconvenience.'

' In the first place it may be observed, that it wouLl be idle to expect
from the a^^ents of Government, however conscientious, the same
watchful attention to the affairs of a National Bank, that is paid by
the Directors of the Bank of Kngland to that establishment. The
heavy losses which tlie Bank has not unfrequently sustained, not-
withstanding the vigilance of its officers, through the forgery and
frauds committed upon it in its capacity of public banker, would,
there is every reason to think, be still greater in the case of a National
Bank. And were such really the case, the insecurity thence arising
might be productive of much mischief.' — Id, p. 58.

Tiie argument of this part of the objections, resembles one
which should say, It is the most difficult thing in the world to
get a Victualling Office to be distinct and clear in its accounts.
All sorts of frauds and forgeries are attempted upon it. The
agents too can never be made to pay that * watchful attention'
to it that they ought. Therefore mend the matter by making
them pork-jobbers in addition. Complicate the business in all

214

Renewal of Bank Charter,

sorts of ways, and you will be astonished to see what simplicity
of action will be the result. Give your agents all kinds of in-
terests in addition to those of merely keeping you a common,
vulgar Victualling Office. Make them butchers, salters, feed-
ers, farmers, and landlords ; — give them the means of having
a huge control over the pig-market, and of getting up and down
the price of pork as it may suit them ; — do all this, and it will
be reviving to behold what * watchful attention' the sense of
their own interests will make them give to your establish-
ment." This is neither more nor less than the substance, of the
argument a complicando.

* In the second place, the circumstance of the Directors of the Bank
of England being principally merchants, largely engaged in commer-
cial transactions, and intimately acquainted with the state of credit in
London and the country, has enabled them to cany on the business
of discounting to a considerable extent, and to make those immense
advances in periods of discredit^ which have sustained the commer-
cial and financial interests of the country. But a National Bank
could not be conducted in this way. It would be indispensable, in
order to prevent, not the actual occurrence merely, but even the sus-
picion of partiality and abuse in the management of its affairs, that
its functionaries should be interdicted from engaging, either directly
or indirectly, in mercantile afltiirs.. The business of discounting would
have to be left entirely to j)rivate individuals; and the employment of
the Directors of the National Bank would have to be strictly con-
fined to the receipt and payment of all monies due to and by Govern-
ment ; and to the payment of their notes when presented. It is plain,
however, that if the Directors of the National Bank were deprived of
the power of discounting, they would have no means of contracting or
enlarging their issues except by the purchase or sale of bullion, ex-
chequer bills, and other government securities. But occasions might,
and indeed it is perfectly certain would arise, when either from politi-
cal or commercial causes, the exchange might be so much affected as
to render it impossible to bring it to par^ by selling or buying bullion
and stock, without producing ruinous fluctuations in the price of the
latter. We look upon the power of modifying the issue of paper, by
enlarging or decreasing the sums advanced upon discount, as quite
essential to those having to control the quantity of paper afloat in
London ; and as such a power could not be conceded to managers ap-
pointed by Government, v/ithout giving birth to every species of job-
bing and abuse, we consider tliis very circumstance as conclusive
against the scheme of erecting a National Bank.' — Id. p. 59.

That the Directors of the Bank should be " principally mer-
chants, largely engaged in commercial transactions," is pre-
cisely the thing wanted to get rid of. Suppose the heads of the
Victualling Office were principally pork-merchants, largely
engaged in commercial transactions.'* What is wanted is
rather, that they should be men who did not know a spare-rib

Renewal of Bank Charter.

215

from a brisket. That the Directors may have made " im-
mense advances in periods of discredit" oat of other people's
money, may be true or not ; but that they have thereby " sus-
tained the commercial and financial interests of the country,"
is intended to be entirely denied. Every farthing- they con-
trived to give to the favoured jobbers, was taken from somebody
else. It was all a pure jugglery, dependent on robbing Peter
to pay Paul. Paul might be kept out of one end of the List of
Bankrupts ; but Peter was pushed in at the other. The whole
of the thing caUed credit, so far as it is founded on taking the
money of one man to give it to another, is a crime and a nui-
sance. The artifice is, to confound it with the credit which one
honest man may voluntarily give another. The things are as
distinct, as stolen bread and paid for ; but names are every-
thing, and as bread is bread, a nation must be allowed half a
century to find out the difference. Why are there to be "rui-
nous fluctuations in the price of stock"? If the proposed sink-
ing-fund should have to sell, one tendency would be for the price
to fall ; but as the interest is to be paid in a ciirrency whose
value is to be increased, another tendency v/ill be for the price
to rise. And if in consequence of the issue of new paper the
sinking-fund should have to buy, there would be two converse
tendencies, which would act against each other still. Nature
appears to have curiously contrived, that the fluctuations shall be
null. That a National Bank should be *' strictly confined to
the receipt and payment of all monies due to and by Govern-
ment," instead of being matter of grief, is just as it ought to be ;
as may be exemplified in a Victualling Office. " The busi-
ness of discountmg" is what ought " to be left entirely to
private individuals and for a national bank to have any
concern with it, is the old blunder of governments setting up
shop-keeping like the king of Holland. " The power of modi-
fying the issue of paper, by enlarging or decreasing the sums
advanced upon discount," may be " quite essential to those
having to control the quantity of paper afloat in London but
what the public wants, is that there should be nobody to " con-
trol the quantity of paper afloat in London," other than through
the operation of a reference to the price of gold, authenticated
by Act of Parliament.

^ In the third place, were a National Bank established, Government
would be converted into a species of money scrivener, and would be
directly implicated in the pecuniary affairs of individuals. Besides
unfolding

— *' the drift of hollow states hard to be spelled,''
it would have to fathom the mysteries of the Jews and jobbers of Ca-
pel Court. If the price of funded property were depressed in conse-

216

Renewal of Bank Charter.

quence of sales made by the National Bank, those who suffered by
such fall would ascribe the injury done them to the improper agency
of Government, who would, in this way, be exposed to perpetual ob-
loquy. Neither is it to be denied that the institution of a National
Bank would afford great facilities for improper dealings in the funds,
on the part of those connected with the Treasury and with its ma-
nagers. Such persons being aware of the measures to be adopted by
the Bank, might be tempted to purchase or sell stock in anticipation
of purchases or sales by it ; even though they did neither, they would
stand an extreme chance of having such conduct imputed to them ;
and every one knows that such imputation would be highly injurious.'
—Id. p. 60.

The object of a National Bank, is that Government should
be prevented from being a species of money scrivener,'' and
that above all existing things, it should be neither directly nor
indirectly " implicated in the pecuniary affairs of individuals."
The way to hinder it from having " to fathom the mysteries of
Jews and jobbers," is to allow it to have no mysteries of Jews
and jobbers of its own. Suppose it was objected to the Govern-
ment's having a Victualling Office, that besides affairs of state,
it would have to unfold the drift of hollow casks hard to be
speird;" — would the way to hinder this, be to compose its
Victualling Office of provision-dealers on their own account ?
The price of funded property will never be *' depressed in con-
sequence of sales made by the National Bank," if the National
Bank never makes any sales at all, or none but under the pro-
posed rule. And nobody connected with the Treasury and
with its managers" will fall into the snare of improper dealings
in the funds," if there is to be no meddling with the currency
at all except under a known and proper rule.

* In the foMrih place, a National Bank would be subservient at all
times to the views of Government. The Bank of England has not,
perhaps, on some occasions, turned a sufficiently deaf ear to the soli-
citations of the minister. But whatever may have been her faiUngs
in this respect, the cajolings and flirtations of the Treasury have had
but little influence over her, compared to what they would have over
the easy virtue of the Managers of a National Bank. Not one in ten
of the Bank Directors owes any thing to Ministers, or is expecting to
gain any thing by their favour. If they consent to their proposals, it
is because they believe them to be advantageous to the Bank and the
public, or because they are naturally disinclined to oppose any serious
obstacles to the Government service. But the Managers of a National
Bank, owing, as they must, directly or indirectly, their appointments
to the Treasury, and being accountable to it only for their proceedings,
what possible motive could they have to refuse any thing that minis-
ters asked ? ' — Id. p. 63.

Why is not the Victualling Office found out in supplying the

Renewal of Bank Charter.

217

tables of Ministers and their dependants with salt pork ? Is it
either through the impossibility of Ministers asking anything
improper, or the dislike the Office would have to oblige a ]\Iini-
ster ? Or is it from the certainty that they and the Ministers,
would bring such a storm about their heads as would not be
paid for to them by all the salt pork in Christendom? Take
away all obstacles to doing wrong ; — make either a Bank or a
Victualling Office that shall be " accountable only to the Trea-
sury for their proceedings" and the Treasury be accountable to
nobody; — do this or anything like it, and there will be no
doubt of the attainment of any specified crop of evil. But the
question was not proposed for the absence of all check, but for
the presence of it. Let them have the Member for Middlesex
to " flirt" with ; let them have a reformed parliament to " ca-
jole and then see what probability there is of our teeth
being taken out of our heads, by a combination between the
Treasury and the clerks of their Paper-Money Victualling-
Office.

Things must be much worse in America than they are here,
if the Americans could not make a Bank, and keep the Minis-
terial flies out of their molasses-tub if they were bent upon it.
It is very likely that they could not be kept out of such a Bank
as was proposed. It is very likely that the Bank proposed was
purposely such a one as would not keep them out. There are
strong interests there as here, against doing the people's busi-
ness cheaply in their own shop. But that does not prove the
evil necessary ; except so far as it is necessary to go without,
when other men can hinder.

The Americans know perfectly well, that they might as well
say they could not hinder their cashiers from taking the money
out of their Army Pay-Office, — or that they could not trust their
frigates with top-gallant sails because they could have no se-
curity against setting them in a gale of wind, — as that they
could not check their Government into checking the issue of
paper money by the price of gold under a law of Congress.
There is nothing mysterious in the principle ; on the contrary
the good sense of the public would go along with the rule, as in
the case of the top-gallant sails, and there would always be
sensible and honest men enough, to prevent the reckless action
of those who might be the opposite. But where there are inte-
rests there are difficulties ; and it is very hard to persuade any
horse to tighten his own curb.

It is apprehended that the principle of an honest paper cur-
rency has as yet made very little progress in the world. When
men hear of an inconvertible paper money, they confound an
inconvertible paper under check with one that is under ou

218

Supplement to Article on

check at all ; the horse with fiis bridle on, with the horse at
liberty to break their necks at his discretion ; — and all manner
of interests are at work to prevent their obtaining any clearing
of their ideas. The success may be uncertain ; but there are
at all events strong inducements to try, whether the attempt to
introduce the present mischief in the warming-pan of an unre-
formed parliament, cannot be effectually resisted.

(f\ Supplement to this Article is in the Westminster Review for 1 Oct. 1832 ;
and contained in a subsequent part of the present Volume.)

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1832.

AuT. XV. — Supplement to the Article on the Silk and Glove Trades'"'
in the Westminster Review for 1 April, 1832.

QINCE the agitation of a subject brings forth truth, as the
^ churning of milk bringeth forth butter, — and as it is always
probable that the objections to a given proposition may arise
out of the imperfect way in which it has been enunciated and
supported, — advantage is taken of a number of comments which
have been received upon the theory of double incidence in the
Article of the preceding Number specified in the head, to try
to extend the elucidation of the principle maintained.

The first objection suggested has been, that the mere transfer
of an advantage cannot with propriety be called an incidence ;
and that in the Article alluded to, nothing more is made out
than one incidence and a transfer.

The answer to this appears to be, that it is at most only a
question of nomenclature. In a transfer of any kind, there must
be two sides, — abstraction from somebody, and a giving to
somebody else ; — and the word incidence was chosen, precisely
because it appeared to include the first of these meanings. It
was not limited to this meaning ; because it was intended
equally to express the occurrence of a loss where there should
be no corresponding gain to anybody else. To take the simplest
case (for which obligation is acknowledged to a commentator),
if a shilling is dropped on the road by one individual and picked
up by another, there is an incidence upon the man who drops,
and an effect of a contrary kind (for which a distinct term does
not so readily present itself) upon the man who finds. But if
instead of being dropped on the road the shilling was dropped
into the sea, there would still be an incidence on the man who
dropped, though there would be no eff'ect of a contrary kind on
somebody that found. Incidence therefore expresses the occur-
rence of a removal, of an abstraction, of a privation, no matter
in what manner, or with what other circumstances attended or

Silk and Glove Trades.

219

not attended ; in short, the infliction of the negative sign in
algebra. And there is no novelty in this ; it is nothing but
what is accordant with the ordinary employment of the term.
If men talk of a tax taken, they ask on whom is the incidence.
Since there is here no question of the tax being more than taken
once and paid once, according to the nomenclature demanded
by the objection there ought to be no incidence at all. But
incidence does not mean what is left on the negative side after
deducting what may chance to be upon the other ; it means
that which is on the negative side to begin with.

And the reason for employing this term is, that it, or some
other to express the same meaning, is essential to the proof in
hand. The proposition to be proved true or false is, that in a
forced trade there are two losings and only one receiving ; and
it is for the sake of arriving at this, that the two losings are
called incidences. There is no denial that the settlement of
the account (supposing the losings and receivings to be each
severally of the same amount) leaves a balance of one ; but it
is not this balance that is named an incidence. If 5/. is taken
from A and given to B, and moreover taken from C and
given to nobody at all, there is no denial that the balance of
the aggregate account is 5/. minus ; but this does not prevent
there being an incidence on A and another on C, of bl. each.
On the contrary it is precisely because there are two incidences
and only one gain (or whatever else it may be chosen to call it),
that the balance is 5/. minus in the end.

The next objection commences on the expression in which
" the loss of the brandy-and-water" to the glove-merchant is
represented as balanced by *' the benefit to his trade." There
may be a portion of obscurity attaching to the word " loss."
As intimated more than once already, there is difficulty in
finding familiar terms to express the addition or subtraction of
the quantities concerned, without being liable to misapprehen-
sion. Loss, to the idea of simple subtraction joins that of vio-
lence or injustice; and gainy though perhaps in an inferior
degree, does something of an opposite kind in respect of simple
addition. It was precisely to parry this difficulty in one in-
stance, that the term incidence was introduced. By " the loss
of the brandy-and-water" to the glove-merchant, was merely
meant that if he applies the shilling to the benefit of his trade,
he at the same time ceases or fails to get the brandy-and-water.
It is the simple removal of the brandy-and-water from the list
of his enjoyments. And on the other hand, it was stated, there
is a " benefit to his trade" to an equal amount ; which must
keep the total balance of the account exactly as it was before.
The benefit which before went down his own throat, is shifted

220

Supplement to Article on

to a benefit to his trade and those concerned in it, in the shape
of new wages or profits ; and consequently, (the argument ran),
if there were two incidences and one benefit before, there must
be the same number still.

But the objection proceeds to state, that in the matter in
hand there is really no question about the loss of the brandy-
and-water. The glove-merchant, who is supposed to rob, can,
not have the brandy-and-water and the benefit to his trade too.
He can only have one ; and if he takes the benefit to his trade,
the only question (it is stated) is, whether the gain to the glove-
maker balances the loss to the person robbed. It can hardly
be maintained (the objection proceeds to say) that in regard to
the interests of the society, a shilling spent in brandy-and-
water is more advantageous than a shilling spent in employing
more journeymen glove-makers. In reality however (it conti-
nues) the illustration is not a correct one, as it leaves the main
point entirely out of consideration, namely, the raising unne-
cessarily the price of gloves.

Now there was never any attempt to maintain that a shilling
spent in brandy and-water is more advantageous than a shilling
spent in employing journeymen glove-makers; on the contrary
they were brought forward as things homogeneous and equi-
valent, and the argument rested on establishing them to be
so. The objection appears founded, on not distinguishing the
argument used in the two simple cases (of the highwayman
and the forcible trader), from the argument in the complex
question brought forward as the difficulty raised by an oppo-
nent; in which last the object was to reconcile the two cases,
and show how and where it was, that the second incidence was
formed when the supposed robber applied the plunder to his
trade.

In every separate case there are always three quantities, two
negative and one positive ; and of the two negative, the reasoner
is at liberty to take which he pleases and consider it as balancing
the positive ; and then (assuming that the three quantities are
equal) there stands out the remaining negative quantity as the
balance on the minus side. To resort, for instance, to the case
of the glove-maker who sells for three shillings what might be
bought from France for two. There is a gain to English glove-
makers and their connexions, llowing down in the shape of an
augmentation of wages or of profits in various degrees to the
tanner, the butcher, the farmer, and the landlord, and exactly
to the amount of a shiUing in the whole ;— this is the positive
quantity. On the other side, there is a manifest loss of a shil-
ling to the English wearer of gloves, who is made to pay three
shillings instead of two; —this is one of the negative quantities.

Silk and Glove Trades,

221

And besides this, there is a loss to the EngUsh tradesmen with
whom the shilhng would have been laid out by the wearer of
gloves if it had not been demanded for his gloves ; — being the
abstraction, in fact, of what would have flowed down in the
shape of an augmentation of wages or of profits in various de-
grees to all the dealers concerned in the fabrication or production
of the goods concerned, to exactly the amount of a shilling in
tbe whole ; — and this makes the second negative quantity. Of
these two negative quantities, anybody is at liberty to take
which he likes, and consider it as set off against the shilling
gained to the English glove-makers ; but whichever of them he
takes, the other remains behind, and makes a loss of a shilling
to England on the general balance. At the same time the
neatest, or, as sailors would say, the most ship-shape way, is,
to consider the advantage to the glove-makers as balanced by
the disadvantage to the dealers thrown out of custom by the
forced application of the shilling ; and for this reason, — that the
quantities (as intimated by the use of the word on a previous
occasion) are what may be called homogeneous, and will there-
fore be compared together with an increased perception of the
accuracy with which they balance each other. For each consists
of the sum total of a shilling, diffused and branched out to an
almost infinite extent, in the shape of increased wages or profits,
in one instance among the exercisers of one set of English trades
and callings, and in the other instance among the exercisers of
another set. Any difficulty there may be in actually tracing
the subdivision of the shilling, is therefore common to both, and
leaves no doubt upon the fact, that the shilling's worth of advan-
tage in one instance is balanced by the shilling's worth of disad-
vantage in the other. But if anybody insists on taking the thing
in the other way, he is welcome ; though it is not so clear.

The fallacy, both of those who go wrong by design and those
who have not suffi.ciently kneaded and worked the subject,
consists in always leaving out of sight one of the two negative
quantities. The fraudulent trader for the most part says, *' It
is true the consumer loses a shilling ; but then the glove-makers
gain one ; — think only what a benefit to trade !" His fraud is
in throwing out of sight the fact, that besides all this, there is
another set of traders somewhere that is losing to the same
amount as the consumer over again. And on the other hand
is sometimes met the altered form of mistake, which consists in
pleading that a gain to a glove-maker must at all events be as
good for society as a gain to any other kind of trader the money
could be spent on, — and leaving out of sight, that if these two
quantities are assumed to balance, the loss to the consumer
stands out without compensation in the aggregate.

222

Supplement to Article on

It is bard to demand of a proposition, that there shall be no
possibility of putting it in a case that shall be complex. Sim-
plicity is a blessing ; but where nature has made cases of com-
plexity, they must be dealt with accordingly. It is very easy
to make cases, where there shall be a good deal of perplexity
attending the tracing of the two incidences and one gain : but
the important fact is, that they always can be traced. Some-
times, as in the proposed instance of the glove-maker who
should take the shilUng on the highway, the easiest method is
by observing, that wherever any supposed circumstance makes
a change of any kind to some one party, it makes a change of a
contrary kind to some other ; and consequently the aggregate
result, — the fact of there being finally two incidences and only
one gain, — remains unaltered. This mode of reasoning is what
is constantly employed in the solution of an algebraic equation ;
and may consequently be trusted here. But in operations of
this kind also, the operator may sometimes take his choice
which of several things he will consider as balancing another ;
and care must be taken that confusion does not arise from con-
sidering the different processes arising from different choices in
this matter, as contradictory.

A commentator to v/hom obligation has already been acknow-
ledged, is severe upon the word " gain." There is no doubt of
its liability to misinterpretation ; but the difficulty is to get any
that is not. There appears no present remedy, but endeavour-
ing to clear the way by explanation of the intended meaning.
It is undeniable also, that there was an obscurity about Vv^hat
was meant by the glove-maker who should take a shilling on
the highway, " applying it to the benefit of his trade," and how
it was to be imagined to be effected. The most intelligible way
of imagining it to take place, is by supposing the robber to add
the shilling to two more, and then buy a pair of gloves for his
own wear with the money, either at his own shop or that of one
of his fellow prohibitionists.

An evening paper* says, that
* If the shilling is not lost twice over upon the total average," it is
not lost twice over at all.'

This is only a misunderstanding arising out of different mean-
ings of the word loss. By the same rule it might be said, when
a shilling is gained once and lost once, that " if it is not lost
once upon the total average, it is not lost at all."

' The consumer of monopoly-priced gloves, or silk stockings, loses
a shilling. That shilling, the 'glover or silk-weaver gains.'

* True Sun, 20 April, J 832.

Silk and Glove Trades.

223

* The tradesman, to whom the consumer of the monopoly-priced
gloves or stockings would have transferred the shilling in question,
loses, m all probability, custom to that extent — but to the same ex-
tent, precisely, some other tradesman gains an increase of custom.'

He does ; but this is the man that has just been reckoned
before, namely, the glover or silk- weaver. The glover or silk-
weaver is reckoned twice over. Count him only once, and the
loss of custom to " the tradesman to whom the consumer of
the monopoly-priced gloves or stockings would have transferred
the shilling," stands out an uncompensated loss.

" The payer of the money gets no linen coats," it is true — but, by
the supposition, he gets something else — though not, of course, full
value for his money. It is in the fact of the payers not getting full
value — in the fact that there is an actual loss to the community —
that the grievance lies : — not, assuredly, in the circumstance of his
" getting no linen coats."

The objector has made the mistake of supposing it was the
three shillings that were spoken of as cut off from the custom
of the woollen-draper, when it was the one. The proposition
as it stood, was the same as his own.

It has been explained before, that by designating

' the supposed thief's abstinence from brandy and water, which would
have been paid for with stolen money, a less to the thief — '

was only meant that there was a removal from him of the enjoy-
ment of the brandy-and-water.

' The case would, we apprehend, stand thus '

^ One man is robbed on the high-way of a shilling. His loss is the
robber's gain.'

^ A tavern-keeper, to whom the robbed man would have handed
over the shilling in question, loses custom to that extent : while a
certain branch of manufacturing industry, in which the Reviewer's
robber is presumed to be engaged, gains, exactly what the tavern-
keeper loses.'

The tavern-keeper did not represent the dealer with whom
the money would have been laid out by the robbed. Which
might be a fruitful source of confusion.

But passing this, and taking the case as it is given ; — The
robber's gain" and the gain to the branch of manufacturing
industry in wiiich he is presumed to be engaged," are not two
things, but one thing. This thing, therefore, cannot balance
both the loss to the man robbed, and the loss to the trader
(here called a tavern-keeper) with whom the money would have
been expended if the robbed man had kept it. The fact is, the
robber's gain (as distinct from the advantage to his trade) is
nothing at all, if he is forced to swallow his own physic, —

224

Supplement to Article on

if he is obliged to add the shilling to two more, and buy a
pair of gloves for his own wear for three shillings which
he might have had for two. He is a man despoiled of a shil-
ling as much as anybody else would be. He may be con-
sidered as robbed in turn ; and what he is robbed of he does
not gain. The shilling thus applied to his trade does not go to
him ; except in the small portion that constitutes his particular
profit. It is divided with the tanner, the butcher, the farmer,
and the landlord. He is plundered of it by the corporation of
people interested in the forced glove-trade like any other man ;
and if he saves the five per cent, which is his profit, it is only
by the accident of his being one of the corporation himself.
And even this fraction has already been counted once as being
included in the " gain to the branch of manufacturing industry"
set off against the custom of the trader with whom the man
robbed on the road would have spent his money. The whole
puzzle arises from counting the same things twice.

There is no denying, that the pursuit of all the imaginary
cases into which the question can be pushed, is very complex
and difficult. At the same time it is important to prove, that
they can be pursued. The simple practical case is much the
easiest ; but the more the subject is agitated in all directions,
the more the truth will stick.

It is scarcely necessary to say that these various comments
have been received with much gratitude ; nor must it be held
impertinent to add, that the result has been a great increase of
confidence in the ultimate accuracy of the principle laid down.
As far as has yet been seen, it certainly holds water. The
prospects held out are immense. Let it once be fully estab-
lished, and perfectly drilled into the minds and souls of men,
that all that is gained by anybody in consequence of commer-
cial restrictions, is lost by the consumer, and over again by
some traders with whom the money would otherwise have
been expended, — let this but become a piece of household
science, like the fact that three groats make a shilling,— -let
the grumbling consumer be once backed by the growling
trader, and let them come to the knowledge that their interest
is not a single interest opposed to the monopolist, but two
against one, — and how long will the Chinese monopoly en-
dure, — how long the East-Indian, — how long the throwing into
the sea of a per-centage upon everything that is eaten, or
drunk, or seen, or worn, that sounds on harp or viol, or grati-
fies the sense with its perfume, — how long the overwhelming
Corn Laws, — how long the un-human poll-tax for paying for
the flogging of women in the West Indies ? The question is
one that Napoleon would have called " gi-andeT If a periodi-

Prospects of Reform.

225

cal work should never assist in establishing any principle but
this, it would be success enough for honest men, and memory
that might satisfy all modest appetite for fame.

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1832.

Art. XVI. — 1. The Extraordinary Black Book: An Exposition of
Abuses m Church and State, Courts of Law, Representation,
Municipal and Corporate Bodies ; with a View of the House of
Commons, past, present, and to come. A New Edition, greatly
enlarged, and corrected to the present time. By the Original
Editor. - London : Effingham Wilson. 1832. 8vo. pp.683.

2. The Rights of Nations : A Treatise on Representative Government,
Despotism, and Reform. By the Author of The Reformer's
Catechism" and The People's Charter." — London : J. Brooks.
1832. 12mo. pp, 454.

3. Parliamentary Candidate'' s proposed Declaration of Principles : or
say, A Test proposed for Parliamentary Candidates. — London.
Published at the Office of the Westminster Review, 5, Welling-
ton Street, Strand ; and sold by the Agents of the Westminster
Review in all parts of the Kingdom. 1831. pp. 18.

/~\NE of the touchstones of a good commander, is always to
^ move forward after a success. A driveller dawdles, and
does not know what to do next ; and so the precious time
passes, and the enemy has time to set himself upon his legs
again. In fact, beat any set of men, and give them three
weeks without following up, and they will be as ready to try to
beat you again as ever they were. It is in the nature of human
affairs, that in all cases of recent contest, each party must either
go forward or backward ; a state of rest may be arrived at by
slow degrees, but it is not a thing to be had by wishing for, nor
by any man's running his head under the bed-clothes and
fancying it is peace.

The English people and the honest part of the aristocracy,
have just beaten the dishonest part of the latter d plate couture ;
which means that the opponent has been fairly forced out of
the field. It is true that it has been done without fighting ;
but then there were none to fight withal. It would have been
useless to recal this fact, if the bad portion of the aristocracy
and their organs had not been the first to talk of military array';
but as it is, it is one of the data for estimating their position.
Men who would have fought and could not, — who were re-
strained from shedding blood by no motive of humanity or love
of country, but who, on the contrary, chuckled over the idea of
settling the manufacturing towns in blood,'' — such men, if
properly looked to, are not dangerous after a great defeat such

VOL. II. p

226

Prospects of Reform.

as they have just met with. Only they must not be played
the fool with ; and decent care must be taken, being down, to
keep them down. They must not be invited to resurrection by
simplicity ; no man scotches a viper and then says, " Go your
way, till I meet you another time." The object is to act wisely
and resolutely now.

The first element for settling the people's position and their
duty, is to see clearly by whom the contest has been won. It
has been won by the combination of two great classes,— the re-
presentatives of the aristocracy that made the Revolution of
1688 and their retainers, — and the masses of intelligent indi-
viduals in the working and middle ranks, that have grown up
since the intermission of war in 1815. There is no need to
distinguish them by symbols x and y, though it could be done
almost as briefly ; for titles, like comparisons, are sometimes
odious. There was a good deal of distrust on both sides, before
these two classes could be made to draw together ; but at last,
draw they did, in spite of all the efforts of open and hidden
enemies, and the result has been to demonstrate, that as long
as they will draw together, the field is before them. They have
no enemy so long as they can combine ; though armed men
would rise out of the ground to demolish both, the moment any
symptom was given of separation. It is the common question,
of whether parties having great interests in union, can make
such smaller sacrifices as shall continue their co-operation ; or
whether they will lose the ninety per cent, by quarrelling and
separating for the ten. The family receipt on these occasions
is, that a good deal must be given up on both sides ; and what
is sense for a family, is sense for a parish or a nation.

The first inference therefore upon view is, that the two par-
ties, — the honest aristocracy and the intelligent people, — must
hold together at all hazards. And the next is, that to accom-
plish this, they must each yield something to the other, and
rather be inclined to strain compliments upon each other, than
to be picked and precise as to what shall be mutually demanded.
The aristocratic side have had a cheap bargain, in being carried
on the shoulders of the people to an elevation that gives them
the prospect of such real greatness, fame, and useful power, as
have never been surpassed in the world's history. They would
not be ungrateful, they would be fools and incapables too low to
be accountable for their actions, if they were to think of quar-
relling with the steed that carries them. And the people, on
the other hand, have done through the junction of the aristo-
cracy, what they would not have done without ; and will do,
through the continuance of the alliance, what they could not
do, or at all events could not do so easily and so well. The

Prospects of Reform.

227

union is a good union, if the parties can only be made to bold
one another in the mutual respect that shall continue it. The
point to be settled therefore is, what each ought to give up to
the other. And here the people have already agreed to give
up, — not only all questions of major changes in the form of go-
vernment, though many of them had imbibed from history
and experience strong leanings in that direction, — but also any
attempt to carry further the alterations in the subordinate forms
and channels of legislation, except so far as the necessity
shall be evinced by future experience. There is no disguise or
concealment, of what it is the people have fixed their minds
upon. They have set their hearts upon being as well governed
as their cousins in the United States : — and they mean to have
it. They have no notion why New York should be governed
well, and Old York ill ; and they have agreed to try whether
the present change will produce the effect desired, and if not,
they will try another. This is their bargain ; and what they
have bargained, they will stand to. But then this is of itself
an enormous quid, and implies a pro quo of proportionate di-
mensions. The fear is not that the upright aristocracy should
give too much, but that after exerting all their talents they should
give too httle. They stand in the situation of officers, who by the
firmness and vigour of the array of common men behind them,
have just been carried to the pinnacle of present success
against a stubborn enemy, who is known to be rallying
again behind the next ridge, to try his fortune in at all
events cutting as much as possible of the fruits of victory.
In such circumstances, if any man were to ask what would
be, not the wisest, but the maddest thing such officers could
do, — if he were to be curious in ascertaining what imagi-
nable proceeding would lead most directly to the conclusion
that it had pleased God to visit them with a privation of the
degree of reason which makes men competent to the actions
of common life, — it would be if it should from any source be
suggested to their minds, to hint about disbanding the array
that had led to victory. If anybody chuses to suppose such a
case,— which is perhaps hardly civil,— the result would clearly
be, that the epaulettes who so conducted themselves, would be
invited to go over to the enemy's side to prevent confusion,
and somebody else would quietly step forward and take their
places. There would be a general cry through the ranks,
that we had not come here for the pleasure of marching up a
given hill, or looking down upon a range of country from a
certain point, but of attaining known public objects, and till
these were practically and substantially secured, the man was
a traitor who should so much as whisper to pile arms. There

p 2

228

Prospects of Reform.

are degrees of folly no man thinks of ; and this is one of them.
But if by some gambol of imagination the case is supposed
to occur, the answer that would fly from rank to rank would
necessarily be, "Neither for you nor any man ! We stand here
" in the plenitude of conscious and experimented strength ; we

should be sorry to suppose that either A or B should think of
" making themselves our enemies, but if A and B are given
" over to an insane mind, A and B must only try."

At the same time it is evident, that no set of men want to
stand in heavy marching order for ever, and that they will
be as willing as anybody else to turn into quiet quarters, the
moment the people on the staff will bring things into a reason-
able state for doing so. What, then, is that reasonable state?

The first essential towards it, is manifestly that our aristocracy
or men of epaulettes shall heive removed from us all those marks
and badges of servitude, the imposition of which they them-
selves protested against when they were a minority. This is a
criterion which anybody must be a barefaced rogue and deceiver
to object to. The various chains and gags and collars, inflicted
since 1791 in the shape of restrictions or impediments on the
press, on the right of popular meeting and communication on
political subjects, the Six Acts, and the Foreign Enlistment
Act, must come down and be trampled under foot before any
man with the spirit of a leader or the honesty of a private senti-
nel, can counsel, or hear of any counsel of abating the least of
the array that has v/on the victory. We have won it by means
of the array ; and we are not so simple as to be told, that be-
cause we have won it, the reasonable inference is that we should
submit ourselves tied and bound to the enemy. If they love us,
they will not dream of asking us any such thing ; for if they
did, they know the answer. We all of us are well avv^are, that
the frame and constitution, the mechanism and carefully con-
trived organization of our government is, that substantial and"
efficacious portions of it shall be born and bred, and christened
and married and buried, under the full influence and operation
of everything which an ingenious theorist could point out as
hostile to the interests of us the people, and that these con-
stitute the antagonist powers, by the action of which the vessel
of the public happiness is to be kept with the keel downwards
and the masts uppermost. We know that it is ruled and re-
gulated, — not as any temporary phsenomenon, but as what is to
be systematically repeated and renewed from generation to
generation, — that one virtually if not ostensibly operative por-
tion of the government, is to be an offset from a foreign
power ; — that the absolute powers of the Continent are always
to have a representative and a vote, and all the final results of

Prospects of Reform,

229

government in England are to be dashed and tempered by the
introduction of this element ; — and we know that this is as it
ought to be, and in fact an invention divina for our happi-
ness and well-being. But then we know too, that we are the
other antagonist power, and that what we have, like the York-
shireman in the farce, we mean to keep ;— that those who wish
to take anything from us, or hinder us from recovering our own
by a very brief and blunt application of what we have got
already, — are welcome to try, but had better think twice if
they feel any interest in not being our enemies. There is a regi-
ment on the other side of the steam-bridge, that manoeuvres
"uncommon" comfortably, and never a commission by purchase
or by father ship among them ; and if it was forced upon us, if
there was absolutely no escape, the only refuge would be to try
something of the same kind here. But the great object of the
guides and counsellors of the masses at the present moment, is
to prevent and keep down the necessity for any such result.
They have been sadly baffled and counteracted by the conduct
of those who might have been supposed to have had an interest
in concert ; and they never had an idea, till they beheld it,
of the quantity of dov/nright sheer republicanism which existed
in this country, in a state for being disengaged by such im-
policy as has been displayed. If they had had the honour of
being consulted, the last thing they would have asked the
Lords to do, would have been to make such a rampant display
of ill-will, followed by such exhibition of inability to resist.
In short, they would have bee-ged the Lords, to let themselves
down gently ; and this merely because their actual conduct
produced an excitation on the popular side, which it was not
easy to direct into conformity wdth the purposes in hand. But
this was not the fault of the people or their leaders ; on the
contrary, it was a difficulty thrown in the way by their opponents.
The people, however, still adhere to their desire to preserve the
old formula of King, Lords, and Commons. The two first have
made but a poor show on the present occasion ; but the people
mean to prop them up. And thereon comes the how f And
this, too, is one of the things the people intend to see settled,
before they abate one jot of the active exertions which have
placed them in the situation of men able to take care both of
themselves and other persons.

The people, then, do not intend to abate a tittle of their
present attitude, till they see the form of government by King,
Lords, and Commons, put out of danger; — and most especially
out of the greatest danger of ail, that of being brought into con-
tinual collision with the safety and interest of the community.
And the way to do this, is neither doubtful nor obscure \— Clear

230

Prospects of Reform,

the way for the present leaders to go on. If anybody should
come forward and say, " Good people, you have just had a great
victory ; whereupon our desire and request is, that you will let
your leaders be taken from your head, and the commanders of
the enemy be settled in their places,'' — if anybody should be
gross and foolish enough to say this, it is plain, that unless it
had pleased heaven in the interval to visit the people with
mental alienation, it would be equivalent to crying " To your
tents, O Israel," and to forcing the people to take all the
measures now^ the initiation and demonstration of which were
so effectual before. It would in fact be asking them to allow
their throats to be cut to-day, by the men they hindered from
doing it yesterday. Any attempt of this nature would be an
act of open hostility ; the consequences of which will be visible
enough when they come. But it is not enough that this should
be impracticable for the moment ; the people are not going to
stand for ever on a cold hill side, when by the mere display of
the legal and irresistible power which is in their hands, they
can obtain security for the future and retire to bed. They know
that the difficulty lies in the House of Lords. They know that
for the last fifty years, men have been poured into that House
for the express purpose of supporting the rotten boroughs as
long as they could, and in case they should fail on that point,
resisting the improvement of the condition of the people after-
wards. For example, is it or is it not, matter of notoriety, that
five rotten boroughs were the market price of a peerage ; —
that is to say, that it was at one time understood and acted on,
that any man who could nominate five Members in the Com-
mons House, might be made a Peer for asking ? And in this
state of things, it is to be made a question with the people,
whether when they and the part of the aristocracy which are
their friends are uppermost, the House of Lords is to be ad-
justed by the introduction of new Members in the ordinary and
constitutional way. It in fact makes part and portion of the
question, whether the people's officers are to be taken from
their head, and those of the enemy substituted in their room.
For any minister who should dream of holding office, and
surrendering the right of advising and determining the making
of Peers to coteries of court ladies or bedchamber lords, —
would evidently hold his popularity and his power of carrying
on the government about as long, as if he w^ere to concede
that the employment of our regiments in making war, should
depend on the appetites and propensities of the juvenile princes
who present themselves from time to time in hussar dresses to
the admiring legionaries. If the formula of King, Lords, and
Commons is to continue, the operation of making peers is the

Prospects of Reform.

231

operation, in which all the others may be said to be bound
up. If the people's minister is not to have it, say so, — and
the question is then reduced to whether the pdbple of Great
Britain, standing in their present attitude of legal activity and
constitutional organization, have or have not the power to
prevent their interests from being at the mercy of a ministry of
their enemies.

The case in short reduces itself to this. The enemies of the
people have been only half beaten ; and the Question is, whether
they shall be whole beaten, or the people shall lay down their
arms before them as they are. And the officers, to say the
truth, are not to be thought too much of ; they are many of them
only a half-and-half set, who come to our side because they
think it will be the strongest in the end. There are those among
them who would take service with the enemy tomorrow, if in
the mean time they could ruin us neatly, and without a chance
of resurrection. As a proof of it, they are hand and glove with
the leaders of the enemy ; and when they have a man to send
upon a foreign mission, it is just in the enemy's ranks they
think of looking for him. They must think us strange idiots if
we are taken in by this, — or if it does not breed a steady cool
determination, that for every act of this kind they try to com-
mit, there must in common prudence be a step more taken, to
advance the power of the democracy at home. If we are to be
served by enemies abroad, it is doubly necessary they should be
directed by none at home. There must be a purgation — a pur-
gation. A squad of the worst must turn out, and better take
their places. Do they expect the English will be cheated like
the French in July ? There is clear treachery already ; our
worst enemies are applied to, to do our business abroad. There
must be an end of this ; and the sooner the better. Either the
people have beaten or they have not ; and if they have not, it is
time they should try. But no frauds of the juste milieu here.
The example is providential; the same men in France, whom
the people in their folly and their stupidity allowed to take the
reins when it was in their power to decide, are seen committing
every enormity of the preceding government with increased
energy, and waiting for another day of popular union to consign
them to destruction. The people of England will take warning,
and keep free while they are free. Their enemies object only
to one thing, — that they should be free. The people may do
what they please, provided they keep clear of this one unreason-
ableness — exercising the influence on the government, that
shall enable them to take care of themselves. They may have
representatives — since it cannot be helped ; — but nothing can
be so unconstitutional and inconsistent with all good govern-

232

Prospects of Reform.

rnent, as their combining in any union which shall make their
representatives of use. The secret is simply this, that the
government is not to be good. The understood bargain is,
that the people shall not be free ; and all that goes to make
them so, is held up as a breach of social order, and to be resisted
accordingly.

There is no arguing with opponents of this kind ; it is a mere
question whether the people have power to hold their own or not.
If they have not, they will be squeezed dry as hay ; and if they
are not so squeezed already, it is only because they have the
power of preventing it. Luckily they have the power, as has
been proved, of preventing it without coming to actual blows ;
and this very power, the modest request is, that they should
consent to lay aside.

Three things then, the people have a naked right to demand,
before they will agree to lay down an atom of the state of pre-
paration for constitutional resistance, which, thanks to the giver
of all good, nobody can make them lay down without consent.
And these are, first, that there shall be no chance of their being
insulted by the proposal for a ministry of their enemies; —
secondly, that the way shall be opened for carrying on the
government under the present form of King, Lords, and Com-
mons, by either turning out the rotten-borough Lords, or, since
no machinery has been provided for such an operation, neutra-
lizing them by the machinery which has been provided, the
introduction of honest blood to dilute the baseness of the
other ; — and thirdly, that our own side of the aristocracy should
show their honesty, by immediately taking off from us the
fetters and badges of slavery laid upon us by our enemies, and
that the criterion shall be, their own resistance to the measures
at the time they were imposed. But this is but dry bread
after all ; it wants a condiment, an unction, to make it slip
down the general throat, and give it some savour of festive
triumph. Besides, men have wives and children, who do not
go far into abstract political questions, though they abide the
consequences ; and for these, there should be something to
make a holiday, some trophy gained that they can feel and
thoroughly enjoy. For instance, is there no biting, insulting
wrong,— no household shame and intruding fireside degrada-
tion, — that makes its way to the table where an honest man
breaks his fast,and causes him to lay his hand upon his daughters'
heads and whisper inwardly, " My dears, you all pay daily for
keeping up a great bad house beyond the sea" ? Would it not
be a glorious thing, a matter for men to think of on their death-
beds with delight, a deed splendid and brilliant in the eyes of
foreign nations, and which would go down to history as of that

Prospects of Reform.

233

class of glowing national acts for which the opportunity was
thought confined to the earlier ages of the world, — if the British
people, standing on the summit of their success and on the
very ground where their cause was won, should put aside all
meaner wrongs, and say, ** Rid us of one disgrace, — liberate us
from one infamy, — let us go home to our wives and daughters
clean men, and not with a conscious dirtiness of soul as payers
for our own dishonour. We demand to be freed from it, not
because it is impolitic, but because it is felony. We are honest
men, and should not pay for " burking^^ our fellow-citizens. We
stand here as we are, till loe see an end of Slavery in the Colo-
nies''' Consider how creditable this would be ; reflect how fitting
for decent people. Remember how gone-by governments have
deceived you with an intended fraud and falsehood in their
mouths ; how they have stamped and determined the baseness
of the act, and then kept you under the avowed baseness for
seven years, for the sake of seven years' profits of the wrong.
Recollect how certain and indisputable it is, that you have in no
instance got anything but what you could command ; that if
the white slaves are not as ill off* as the black, it is owing to one
feeling — fear. Just turn in your minds, how simply, how
speedily, how effectually, the whole question might be settled,
and we and our children walk without an inward blast of degra-
dation in our souls, — if the Political Unions would but agree
to demand the abatement of the West-Indian nuisance ? What
strange people those religious are ! Here will they make a
point of not paying taxes for an ecclesiastical establishment
they dislike, except after the exercise of such resistance as is
within the law, to mark their hatred,— and yet not one of them
ever moves the question, whether it is consistent with a con-
scientious man's duty, to pay for the support of known crime
without being subjected to the same degree of force. They
can protest in the one case, because it concerns their party ;
they cannot in the other, because it only concerns their souls.
A pretty reckoning it will be at the last day, when they are
asked, " How came you to refuse church-dues unless your goods
were taken, and had not the spirit to refuse in the same way
to pay a tax for supporting the flogging of women in the West-
Indies?" They will say perhaps, that Peter caught a had-
dock. But it was not set before him in its nakedness, Friend
Peter, now thou knowest, that what thou fishest for, is to
keep a brothel in a Roman colony." And Peter's too, was the
act of a man submitting to foreign conquest to avoid bloodshed,
and not of a free citizen giving the approbation of his con-
sent. If the only consequence of refusing the Roman tax-
gatherer, would have been the taking of a cup or platter out

234

Prospects of Reform.

of that house that hke a good man he nursed his wife's mother
in, it may he very doubtful whether Peter would have gone to
fish. Or some will say, You may use the dearer sugar. But
why are our consciences to allow of paying for the infamy
without resistance, in this way more than in the other? But
these things go by fancy. It is very odd, nevertheless, that
any man should fancy paying for such disgrace, while there
is a way of vindicating, not his pocket, but his honour, — not his . /
interest, but his conscience of not having submitted cowardly,
without a protest, to degradation. Such things, however, re-
quire concert. Everything must have a beginning. Come
forward one man, and there shall be two ; which is a considera-
ble progress geometric, whatever it may he arithmetically. It
would be splendid energy, that what men would not do in their
own cause, they should do in the cause of others. Suppose we
were taxed to pay to keep " burkers^ Would it not he the duty
of a well-bred Christian to refuse ? Put it on this ground, if
preferred ; say that as gentlemen you cannot think of it. There
is one set of men, however, who must be treated gently when
the time comes ; and those are the hereditary owners. A man
cannot help the place he is horn in. There are good people
everywhere ; but they must show themselves. One of the most
humane and amiable men the writer of this ever knew, was
born the hereditary master of a slave-factory on the coast of
Africa. But for the men who join for filthy lucre, have neither
pity nor remorse. They have had time enough for warning ;
and any loss to them will be only part of their speculation.
They entered on it, knowing they were entering on a con-
demned business; and set their gains accordingly. If an
insurer chuses to insure for a high premium on an act of despe-
rate piracy, is that any reason the piracy should be spared ?

Suppose again, that after seven years' promise to abate the
" burking'^ nuisance, a committee was sitting to report on the
state of the wells and premises. Would not the iirst question
be, " Have they examined, do they mean to examine, is there
any chance that they will examine, will they allow anybody to
bring to be examined, any single individual of the class on
whom the " burking'' falls ? Consider what would be thought
of an operation, whose manifest end and object was, to bring up
the " burkers'' and invite them to give evidence for themselves.
You are played with ; you are made fools of ; go to the Political
Unions and make men of yourselves, and then hold up your
heads before your wives and families. Be well prepared too with
the bowels of the question. If any man tells you to look at the
magnitude of the trade, tell him that all trade supported by a
tax, is paid for twice, once by the payer of the tax, and once more

Prospects of Reform.

235

by the people from whom the honest trade is taken. Ask him
why a trade in honest sugar should not be as good as in sugar
you are disgraced to pay for. If he says there are slaves in the
East Indies too, — first deny it, — secondly, ask him why, villainy
against villainy, there is to be that particular villainy that you
must pay for. If anybody points to the revenue and toshippinfj,
tell him the same might be derived from an honest trade, and
more ; and that the boast of revenue and shipping from a trade
that cannot keep itself, is a simple cheat for the iDenefit of the
concerned. If any man tells you he has been credibly informed
the slaves are happy, ask him if he would believe his informants
if they told him the fish in a frying-pan were happy. Can a
slave marry, can a slave prevent his children from, being sold to
other lands, can a slave give evidence of the rape of his daughter
or the murder of his wife, though he saw it with his eyes ? Oh,
a man who can do none of these, must be wondrous happy ; —
what a " cake," what a piece of unleavened dough, must he be
that can be persuaded of it ! An Englishman may lack fresh
beef ; but what would he think of a law, which made it criminal
to have fresh beef in his possession ? Would this come home to
him, and persuade him slaves were comfortable ? All this is
done, and you, you, pay for it ; and for no other end to your-
selves, than that men shall come into your legislature to vote
against your happiness. Is it true or not, that the West-Indian
interest has always been in the head and front of the opposition
to your own freedom ? And how could it be otherwise ; would
it not have been a disgrace, to have had any interest it could
have in common ? Things may be endured to a certain length ;
but there are lengths that men who have lived where "bells
have knoU'd to church,'' respectable men, well-educated
men, decent men, men who have the habits of good society,
cannot endure, — there is a better word, will not. Don't endure
it ;— you may put it down in two months if you like. You have
gained greater things than this ; gain this. If the government
should put forward any plea of difficulty, tell them it is the first
time the people of England have been advised to fear an enemy
kept up by a vote of the House. Hear no pleas on the proba-
bility of insurrection. Tell the " burkers/' the sooner the
"Italian boys" can rise upon them, the better for you ; and that
after having had seven years to abate the nuisance, they must
be their own insurers. At last the press of England has taken
up the right tone on that point* ; and has boldly declared, that
insurrection is what the slaves must look to for relief. The people
of England is with them heart and soul. How does an officer or

* Morning Chronicle. Examiner.

236

Prospects of Reform.

soldier expect to be received, who comes back after performing
the part of Jack Ketch for our enemies ? Once more to the
Political Unions, — don't endure it ; but hold together like burrs,
till you see this foul, indecent, unmanly shame wiped off from
you and your posterity.

Do all this, and there will be something done for the " Pros-
pects of Reform." Afterwards the means wall be of a more
ordinary kind. The choice of good men to be representatives, is
the great end to be pursued. For this purpose, th^ Political
Unions are a ready organized set of committees. Chuse no
man, that will not be your delegate, or resign when your opi-
nions clash. It would be an improvement still, if he could be
paid as in the olden time, and as in America at this day. It
would be a pleasant thing to hear a member say, " My consti-
tuents, whose money I take, and whom of course I cannot go
against." This is the true footing. If men have interests, they
pay the lawyer they think can serve them. If lawyers offered
to serve at their own expense, what would be the inference, but
that they paid themselves out of the property that came before
them ? As to what should be demanded of such delegates, it
would be useless to attempt a digest here ; the work last cited
in the head of the Article, is the legacy of the great man who
is just gone to the Power that made him. The other books cited
in the same place, afford copious illustrations of what there is to
oppose and what to amend ; and though perhaps not invariably
right, they in the main give a formidable opinion of the judg-
ment as well as talent of those who mean to set about the opera-
tion. One word of advice may be not unseasonable. Take care
not to be deceived by the strategemsof the enemy. Let no man,
for instance, unless he has a tail or some other asinine append-
age, be taken in by such a raw jest as the Factory Bill. A Tory
club have cut us off from our trade, — made laws that we shall
not sell the labour of our hands, — reduced us and ours to the
bare possibility of keeping soul and body together by labour the
most excessive, and toil the most extravagant ;— and these very
men shall come forward and tell us, that if we will send them
to parliament to support all this abuse, — to maintain the Corn
Laws, and keep down all chance of being allowed to sell our
goods abroad, — they will do, what pass a bill to prevent us
from working our own children more than ten hours a-day.
This is kind; this is benevolent; this is worth a man's going
on his knees in the mud to thank them for. Get hberty to buy
and sell, ye Issachars, ye asses couching between two burdens ;
and then your children may live by your labour, without leave
from those who starve you. If negro slaves did anything so
, absurd, the world would say, how debasing the effects of

Programme to &c.

237

slavery ! Feel every man for a tail, who talks of such a thing.
Time was, a Yorkshireman might walk abroad, with some
consciousness of being supposed as knowing as his neigh-
bours. If fooleries of this kind go on, Gotham will be put in
Schedule A, and the representation of unreason transferred into
the West Riding.

Programme to the Westminster Review, for 1 October, 1832.

THE Tories in their wisdom have set on its legs the question
of the Ballot. Lord John Russell says he will support it if, —
and everybody else is moving to support it because. The great
object for the country just now, is to give the Tories reason to
join the cry.

There are symptoms of something very like a split, in the
United States of America. Such an event would give un-
measured joy to the friends of tyranny in Europe; though if
the case be as suspected, the reason would not be much.
What the friends of republican institutions have maintained, is
that a republic may hold together if conducted with sense and
honesty ; not if conducted without. An oppression liketh e
American Tarif or the English Corn Law^s, consisting in pre-
venting one part of a community from buying and selling in
the market, that another may enjoy a fraction of the amount, —
is undeniably good and sufficient cause for any kind of Revo-
lution, provided it is certain no other method will avail. It is
the olden problem of the point where the duty of resistance
begins ; with which mankind by this time ought to be pretty
generally familiar.

The "Bank'' totters to its foundation; and the East-India
Company is reduced to sending out travelling-preachers. The
meeting at Birmingham has repeated the phsenomenon of the
Kilkenny cats ; each of the combatants has eaten the other up
except the tail. The lovers of misrule appear to have expecta-
tions from something that is to be done in Ireland ; and the
English people is waiting for it, as another opportunity to what
a sailor calls *' heave and pall." A French fleet is on its way
to Spithead, and an English one to the Scheldt. *' Conserva-
tive " principles are at a discount throughout the world, and
mankind everywhere are kicking off the fetters in which they
used to dance for the amusement of their masters.

We must be rid of the war party among the Radicals ; that
is to say, of those who will not allow us the chances of peace
which depend on being ready for war in a just cause. For in-
stance, there could not be a remonstrance in behalf of betrayed
Poland, but somebody must beg an assurance might be tacked

238

M*' Culloch's Edition of

to the end of it, that England did not mean to s:o to war. This
is selling us, as the Juste Milieu have done in France. Not so
acted the founders of England's greatness, Elizabeth, and the
" Chief of Men." O for four hours of the noble old Republic,
before the Whoremaster came back upon us with his bastards; —
to pen a petition to the Majesty of all the Russias I

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

Art. 1. — An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations. By Adam Smith. LL.D. — With a Life of the Author,
an Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations,
By J. R. Culloch, Esq. Professor of Political Economy in the
University of London. — 4 Vols. Svo. Edinburgh ; Black, Tait.
London ; Longman. 1828.

' ^/ITITH regard to the *' Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations"

^ ^ * itself, we may observe that, after having been for

* more than half a century before the world, it still continues to

* keep its place as the standard work on the subject of which it
' treats. But during the period that has elapsed since its first

* publication, the science of political economy has, as might be

* expected, made considerable advances ; and several of the

* principles laid down by Dr. Smith have been discovered to be

* erroneous, or at least to require correction and modification.

* An edition of the work, therefore, was wanted, in which the

* light of these subsequent investigations should be brought to
' illustrate the text, so that it should still present a view of the

* science in its modern and improved state. Such an edition
' is that before us^. In the notes and supplementary disser-

* tations which Mr. MaccuUoch has appended to Dr. Smith's

* original statements, he has noticed whatever contributions of

* importance have been made to the science since the time of

* that writer ; and explained with great ability the views which
' at present prevail wherever they differ from those offered in

* the body of the work, A very learned preliminary discourse

* also presents an account of the rise and progress of the sci-

* ence up to the era of the publication of the " Wealth of
' Nations," followed by a brief but comprehensive statement of

* the improvements which it has since received. To the whole

* work is added an index of unusual fulness, and apparently

* drawn up with great care. So that in these four volumes

* * An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ; by
' Adam Smith, LL. D. With a Life of the Author, Introductory Discourse,
' Notes, and Supplemental Dissertation, by J. R. McCulIoch, Esq. 3 vols. Svo.
'London, 1832.

the " Wealth of Nations:'

239

* we have really a complete encyclopedia of the science of po-

* litical economy y embracing its history from its rise to the
' present day, and detailing all the successive changes which its

* doctrines have undergone till they have been brought to the

* state in which they now are. The price of the book is two

* guineas and a half.'

This is the advertisement and puff collateral in the govern-
ment's Penny Magazine* ; of which it circulates 130,000 copies
without stamps. If William Cobbett had put forth such an
article on political economy on the plea that it contained
nothing that was political, — he would be assailedi both for the
stamp duty and the advertisement ; and honest people's chil-
dren, struggling to be starved next week instead of this, would
be sent to mend their practice in the society of housebreakers.
In noting which, it is not meant to play into the hands of the
enemy, from whom it is a deliverance to have loosed a little
finger though the hands remain tied ; but to mark the
shabbiness of a government with a whole nation at its back,
truckling with the powers of evil, after such a distinct avowal
of the desirableness of liberation w^here the feeling is its
own.

All this, however, forms no reason for making an unfair
representation of a book in return ; though it will be surmised
that the extract, especially in the parts here distinguished by
italics, is considered as going a little too far. It is an awful
thing to have undertaken to mend Adam Smith, — in the event
of any failure ; and the responsibility is not lessened, by the
University of London being in some sort made the scene of
operations.

The First Section of the commentator s " Introductory Dis-
course" contains valuable memoirs of the conflict between com-
parative light and darkness, from the early periods of history
to the publication of Adam Smith's book in 1776. In which
it is interesting to discover, that the absurdities which the
good sense of the age is opposing with the vigour of recent in-
surrection, were in fact never left without witness against them ;
but that in the full bloom and blossom of the wisdom of our
ancestors, there were always some of whom the w^orld was not
worthy, who kept up in solitude the lamp of heresy and
truth.

* The once prevalent opinion, that wealth consists exclusively of
j^old and silver, naturally grew out of the circumstance of the money
of all civilized countries being almost entirely formed of these metals.
Having been used both as standards by which to measure the relative

* For June 23, 1832.

240

Culloch's Edition of

value of different commodities and as the equivalents for which they
were most frequently exchanged, gold and silver, or money, acquired
a factitious importance, not in the estimation of the vulgar only, but in
that of persons of the greatest discernment. The simple and decisive
consideration, that all buying and selling is really nothing more than
the bartering of one commodity for another — of a certain quantity of
corn or cloth, for example, for a certain quantity of gold or silver,
and vice versa — was entirely overlooked. The attention was gradu-
ally transferred from the end to the means, from the momifs worthio
the money itself ; and the wealth of individuals and of states was
measured, not by the abundance of their disposable products — by the
quantity and value of the commodities with which they could afford
to purchase the precious metals — but by the quantity of these metals
actually in their possession. — And hence the policy, as obvious as it
was universal, of attempting to increase the amount of national
wealth by forbidding the exportation of gold and silver, and en-
couraging their importation.' — M'^CullocKs Introductory Discourscj
p. xii.

One reason might be, the desire to have at hand the readiest
means of transporting value for purposes of war ; in short,
a military chest. But so far as this idea was not concerned, the
explanation of the zeal for making gold and silver come into a
country and not go out, lay in the ignorance of the principle
by which any imaginable quantity of an instrument of ex-
change above a certain amount (supposing it possible to
prevent its escape, which is hardly practicable where there is
to be intrinsic value) will always reduce itself to the value of
such certain amount, by the intervention of a rise of prices. It
was the fallacy of Sinclair and Attwood, — *' Make money, and
people will be rich — without surmising that no man could
gain anything by being made the vehicle for two pieces of
money instead of one, if the two would only buy the same as
the one, and that in addition to this there might be a horrible
destruction of the interests of all the labouring classes by the
concomitants of the process*.

* Is it possible that any labouring man should be unable to see, that instead
of an increase in the nominal quantity of money (as for instance by the
multiplication of bank paper) being a source of advantage to his class, it is by
the directly opposite process that he would be the gainer? If for instance
pound notes were multiplied till two would only buy what one pound does now,
would any working man be the better for receiving two such poimds at the
week's end, instead of one of the old ? But would he get the two pounds j and
how if he stuck at four-fifths of it instead f And is it not plain that he zvould
stick at some such mark ; and that the masters would always contrive to have
the wages behind the altered value of money and not before ? And on the con-
trary, if by reducing the quantity of money one pound was made to have the
value of two, is it not plain that the operatives would have an advantage of the
same kind against the masters in turn, though it is likely they would not be
able to make an equal use of it ? This is sufficient to account for the zeal of the
masters for an augmentation in the nominal quantity of money; and any in-

the Wealth of Nations:'

241

' It appears from a passage in Cicero, that the exportation of the pre-
cious metals from Rome had been frequently prohibited during the
period of the Republic ;* and this prohibition was repeatedly renewed,
though to very little purpose, by the Emperorsf. Neither, perhaps, has
there has been a state in modern Europe whose early laws have not ex-
pressly forbidden the exportation of gold and silver. It is said to have
been interdicted by the law of England previously to the Conquest ; and
reiterated statutes were subsequently passed to the same effect ; one
of which, (3d Henry VIII. cap. 1,) enacted so late as 1512, declared,
that all persons carrying over sea any coins, plate, jewels, &c. should,
on detection, forfeit double their value.' — Int. Dis. p. xii.

The passage from Pliny is an early specimen of lamentation
over the misfortune of men's being permitted to buy instead of
keeping the money in their pockets ; conveyed in language
ludicrously accordant with the wailings of the moderns. Why
did not the Romans abstain from pepper, and season with
sesterces ?

^ The extraordinary extension of commerce during the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries occasioned the substitution of a more refine<^
and complex system for increasing the supply of the precious metals
in place of the coarse and vulgar one that had previously obtained.
The establishment of a direct intercourse v/ith India by the Cape of
Good Hope; seems to have had the greatest influence in effiecting this
change. The precious metals have always been one of the mo>t ad-
vantageous articles of export to the East ; and notwithstanding the
old and deeply rooted prejudices against their exportation, the East

crease of business or employment to arise from such an augmentation, is mani-
festly a joke, if the result is to be that two bits of paper are to do the work of
one.

It is an astonishing fact, that the operatives should just now be found crying
for the very thing, that if they had their wits about them, they would consider
as the greatest injury ; — the very screw by the operation of which tl^ey were re-
duced, under the Pitt fraud, to the miserable condition they have never been able
to get the better of. Day by day were their substantial w^ages reduced by the
successive depreciation of the currency ; and the more they tried to overtake
the original amount, the farther they were left behind. And still the simpletons
are ready to call at anybody's bidding, for an increase of paper money. There
is no cure for it but one, Knowledge. Will the higher classes take off the tax
on that commodity, before the people break into their preserves, or not ?

After the above was in types, it was observed with great satisfaction that the
same view of the matter had been taken by the author of the Political Regis-
ter (Aug. 18. 1832) ; of whom there is no man but may say, as Frederick did to
, Laudon at table, J'airne mieux vous voir d mes cuteSy que vis-d-vis de moi.

* " Exportari aurum non oportere, cum scepe antea senatus, turn me consule, gra-
vissimejudicavit." " That ^'old should not be exported, had been decreed under
very heavy penalties by the Senate, in my Consulship, as well as many times
before.'' — Orat. pro L. Flacco, sect. 28.

t * Pliny, when enumerating the silks, spices, and other Eastern products im-
ported into Italy, says, *' Minimdque computatione millies centena millia sesfertium
annis omnibus, India et Seres, peninsulaque ilia (^Arabia) im,perio nostra demuntV
" And on the lowest computation a hundred millions of sesterces [about a million
sterling] is taken annually by India, China, and the Arabian peninsula, from our
Empire." — Hist. Nat. lib. xii. cap. 18.
VOL. II. Q

242

M^Cullocli's Editio7i of

India Company obtained, when first instituted, in 1600, leave annually
to export foreign coins, or bullion, of the \alue of 30,000/.; on con-
dition, however, that they should import, within six months after the
termination of every voyage, except the first, as much gold and silver
as should together be equal to the value of the silver t^xported by them.
But the enemies of the Company contended, that this condition was
not complied with ; and that it was besides contrarij to all principle^
and highly injurious to the public interests, to permit gald and silver
to be sent out of the kingdom. The merchants, and others interested
in the support of the Company, could not controvert the reasoning of
their opponents, without openly impugning the ancient policy of abso-
lutely })reventing the exportation of the precious metals. They did
not, however, venture to contend, nor is there indeed any good reason
for thinking that it really occurred to them, that the exportation of
bullion to the East was advantageous, on the ground that the commo-
dities purchased by it were of greater value in England. But they
contended, that the exportation of bullion to India was advantageous,
bec ause the commodities imported from thence were chiefly re-exported
to other countries, from which a much greater quantity of bullion was
obtained than had been required to pay them in India. Mr. Thomas
Man, the ablest of the Company's advocates, ingeniously compares the
operations of the merchant in conducting a trade carried on by the
exportation of gold and silver, to the seed-time and harvest of agricul-
ture. " If we only behold," says he, the actions of the husband-
man in the seed-time, when he casteth away much good corn into the
ground, we shall account him rather a madman thun a husbandman.
But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of
his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase of his
actions." *

^ Such was the origin of what has been called the mercantile
system: and, when compared with the previous prejudice — for it
hardly deserves the name of system — which wholly interdicted the
exportation of gold and silver, it must be allowed that its adoption
was a considerable step in the progress to sounder opinions. The
su})porttrs of the mercantile system, like their predecessors, held that
gold and silver alone constituted wealth ; but they thought that sound
policy dictated the propriety of allowing their exportation to foreigners,
provided the commodities imported' in their stead, or a portion of
them, were afterwards sold to other foreigners for a greater amount
of bullion than had been originally laid out on their purchase ; or,
provided the importation of the foreign commodities caused the ex-
portation of so much more native pro(Uice than would otherwise have
been exported, as would more than equal their cost. These opinions
necessarily led to the celebrated doctrine of the Balance of Trade, It
was obvious that the precious metals could not be imported into coun-
tries destitute of mines, exce^.t in return for exported commodities :
and the grand object of the supporters of the mercantile system was
to monopoli^.e the largest possible supply of the precious metals, by

* ' Treasure by Foreign Trade, orig. cd. p. 50.'

the *' Wealth of Nations:'

243

the adoption of various complex schemes for en coiirag-ing exportation,
aiid restraining the importation of almost all products, excej tgold and
silver, that were not intended for future exportation. In consequence,
the excess of the value of the Exports over that of the Imports came to
be considered as beint^ at once the sole cause and measure of the pro-
gress of a country in the career of wealth. This excess, it was taken
for granted, could not be balanced otherwise than by the importation
of an equal value of gold or silver, or of the only real wealth it was
then supposed a country could possess.'

' The principles and conclusions of the mercantile system, though
absolutely false and erroneous, afford a tolerable explanation of a few
very obvious phenomena ; and what did mure to recommend tnem,
they were in perfect unison with the popular prejudices on the sub-
ject. The merchants, and practical men, who were the founders of
this system, did not consider it necessary to subject the principles
they assiuned to any very refined analysis or examination. But,
reckoning them as sufficiently established by the common consent and
agreement of mankind, they applied themselves almost exclusively to
the discussion of the practical measures calculated to give them the
greatest efficacy.'

Although a kingdom," says Mr. Mun, ^' may be enriched by
gifts received, or by purchase taken, from some other nations, yet
these are things uncertain, and of small Cunsideration, when they
happen. The ordinary means, therefore, to increase our wealth and
treasure, is by foreign trade, wherein we must ever observe this rule
— to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value*
For, suppose, that when this kingdom is plentifully served with cloth,
lead, tin, iron, fish, and other native commodities, we do yearly ex-
port the overplus to foreign countries to the value of 2,200,000/., by
which means we are enabled, beyond the seas, to buy and bring in
foreign wares for our use and consumption to the value of 2,000,000/.:
by this order duly kept in our trading, we may rest assured that the
kingdom shall be enriched yearly 200,000/. which must be brouirfit
to us as so much treasure; because that part of our stock which is
not returned to us in wares, must necessarily be brought home in
treasure." *

' The gain on our foreign commerce is here supposed to consist ex-
clusively of the gold and silver which, it is taken for granted, must
necessarily be brought home in payment of the excess of exported
commodities. Mr. Mun lays no stress whatever on the circumstance
of foreign commerce enabling us to obtain an infinite variety of useful
and agreeable products, which it would either have been impossible
for us to produce at all, or to produce so cheaply at home. We are
desired to consider all this accession of wealth — all the vast additions
made by commerce to the motives which stimulate, and to the com-
forts and enjoyments which reward the labour of the industrious, as
nothing^ — and to fix our attention exclusively on the balance of

* ' Treasure by Foreign Trade, p. 11.'
Q 2

244

M^Cullocli's Edition of

200,000/. of gold and silver I This is much the same as if we were
desired to estimate the comfort and benefit derived from a suit of
clothes, by the number and glare of the metal buttons by which they
are fastened. And yet Mr. J\Iun's rule for estimating the advantage
of foreign commerce, was for a long time regarded, by the generality
of merchants and practical statesmen, as infallible ; and such is the
inveteracy of ancient prejudices, that we are still annually congra-
tulated on the excess of our exports over our imports I ' — Int, Dis
p. xiii.

If the attempt to hedge-in gold and silver was unmixed folly,
the Mercantile System was the kind of hybrid denominated
half-wittedness. But it should be spoken of with respect, for
to this day it would be received with reverence in the House of
Commons, and various other quarters it would be invidious to
particularize.

^ The shock given to previous prejudices and systems by those
great discoveries and events, which will for ever distinguish the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries, and the greater attention which the
progress of civilization and industry naturally drew to the sources of
national power and opulence, prepared the way for the downfall of
the mercantile system. The advocates of the East India Company,
whose intere^ts had first prompted them to question the prevailing
doc'rines as to the exportation of bullion, began gradually to assume
a higher tone ; and at length boldly contended that bullion was nothing
but a commodity^ and that its exportation ought to be rendered as free
as the exportation of any other commodity. Nor were these opinions
confined to the partners of the East India Company. They were
gradually communicated to others ; and many eminent merchants
were taught to look with suspicion on several of the best received
maxims ; and were thus led to acquire more correct and comprehen-
sive views with respect to the just principles of commercial inter-
course. The new ideas ultimately made their way into the House of
Commons; and, in 1663, the statutes prohibiting the exportation of
foreign coin and bullion were repealed, and full liberty given to the
East India Company, and to private traders, to export these articles
in unlimited quantities.'

* In addition to the controversies respecting the East India trade,
the discussions to which the foundation of the colonies in America
and the West Indies, the establishment of a compulsory provision
for the support of the poor, and the acts prohibiting the exportation
of wool, &c. gave rise, attracted an extraordinary portion of the
public attention to questions connected with the domestic policy of
the country. In the course of the seventeenth centur}'-, a more than
usual number of tracts were published on commercial and economical
subjects. And although the authors of the greater number appear to
have been strongly tinctured with the prevailing spirit of the age, it
cannot be denied, that several of them rise above the prejudices of
their contemporaries, and have an unquestionable right to be regarded

the Wealth of Nations ^

245

as the founders of the modern theory of commerce — as the earliest
expositors of those sound and liberal doctrines, by which it has heen
shown, that the prosperity of states can never be promoted by restric-
tive regulations, or by the depression of their neighbours — that the
genuine spirit of commerce is altogether inconsistent with the dark,
selfish, and shallow policy of monopoly — and that the self-interest of
mankind, not less than their duty, requires them to live in peace, and
to cultivate a fair and friendly intercourse with each other.' — Int. Dis.
p. xxiv.

The light thrown on the works and history of the early con-
fessors of Political Economy in England, is interesting enough
to authorize a considerable extent of extracts.

' With the exception of Mr. Mun, to whom reference has been
already made, Sir Josiah Child is perhaps the best knov/n of all the
commercial writers of the seventeenth century. His New Discourse of
Trade was first published in 1668 ; but it was very greatly enlarged
in the next edition, published in 1690. There are many sound and
liberal doctrines advanced in this book. The argument to show that
colonies do not depopulate the mother country is as conclusive as if it
had proceeded from the pen of Mr. Malthus ; and the just and forcible
reasoning in defence of the naturalization of the Jews is highly cre-
ditable to the liberality and good sense of the writer, and discovers a
mind greatly superior to the prejudices of the age. Sir Josiah has
also many excellent observations on the bad effects of the laws against
forestalling and regrating ; on those limiting the number of appren-
tices, and preventnig the exportation of bullion ; and on corporation
privileges.' — Int. Dis. p. xxv.

* The principal defect in the writings of Mun, Child, &c. did not
really consist so much in their mistaken opinions about the superior
importance of the precious metals, and the balance of trade, as in
those respecting the superior advantages which they supposed were
derived from the importation of durable, rather than of rapidly perish-
able commodities. Thisj however, was an extremely natural opinion ;
and we cannot be surprised that the earlier writers on commerce
should not have avoided falling into an error, from which neither the
profound sai^^acity of Mr. Locke, nor the strong sense of Mr. Harris,
has been able to preserve them. But even so early as 1677, the fal-
lacy of this opinion had been perceived. In that year, there appeared
a small tract, entitled, England's Great Happiness ; or, a Dialogue
between Coiitent and Complaint ; in which the author contends, that
the importation of wine and othtr commodities, which are speedily
consumed, but for which there is a demand, in exchange for money,
is advantageous; and, on this ground, he defends the French trade,
which has been uniformly declaimed against by the supporters of the
mercantile system. I shall make a short extract from this remarkable
tract : '

" Complaint, — You speak plain ; but what think you of the French
trade ? which draws away our money by wholesale. Mr. Fortrey,*

* ' Mr. Fortrey's pamphlet has been much referred to. It was pubhshed in

24G

M^Culloch's Edition of

whom I have heard you speak well of, gives an account that they get
1,600,000/. a-year from us."

" Cotitent. — 'Tis a great sum ; but, perhaps, were it put to a vote
in a wise Councils whether for that reason the trade should be left off,
'twould {TO in the negative, — 1 must confess, I had rather they'd use
our goods than money ; but if not, I would not lose the getting

OF TEN POUNDS BECAUSE I CAn't GET AN HUNDRED J and 1 dou't

question but when the French get more foreign trade, they'll give
more liberty to the bringing in foreign goods. I'll suppose John-a-
Nokes to be a butcher, Dick a-Styles to be an Exchange man. your-
self a lawyer, wiil you buy no 7neat or ribbands^ or your wife a fine
Indian gown or fan, because they will not truck with you for indentures
which they have need of? I suppose no ; but it you get money enough
of others, you care not though you give it away in specie for these
things ; I think 'tis the same case."

' The general spirit of ^his tract may perhaps be better inferred
from the titles of some of tlie dialogues. Amonir others, we have

To export money, our great advantage 'f — " The French trade a pro-
fitable trade — Variety of wares for all markets, a great advantage
— ''High living, a great improvement to the arts — Invitation of
foreign arts, a great advantage — ^« Multitudes of traders, a great ad-
vantage,''' &c'. &c. But its influence was far too feeble to arrest the
current of popular prejudice. In 1678, the year alter its publication,
the importation of French commodities was prohibited for three years.
This prohibition was made perpetual in the reign of William III.
when the legislature declared the trade with France a nuisance ! — a
principle, ii' I may so call it, which has been acted upon up to this
very hour, with the exception of the short period during which the
commercial treaty, negociated in 1786, had effect.' — Int. Dis. p.
XXV ii.

Though not exactly ContenV^ case as given, it is worth
noting how easily the reasoning of 1677 is transferable to the
question which puzzles the whole unreformed House of Com-
mons, — of how it can be consistent with wisdom to buy a good
bargain of France, unless France will consent to ihe reciprocity
of buying a good bargain for herself in turn. It would belong
before any sane individual could be found to start such a diffi-
culty with Dick-a-Styles.

^ Notwithstanding the immense variety of pursuits in which Sir
William Petty was engaged, his discriminating and original genius
enabled him to strike out new lights, and to make many valuable dis-
coveries in them all. His treatise " On Taxts and Contributions,"
published in 1667, — his Quantuhwicunque,'' published in 16S2, — his
Essays on Political Arithmetic," first pubhshed in 1687, and his
PoUtical Anatomy of Ireland," published in 1691, are among the

1663, and reprinted in 1673. It contains a very good argument in favour of in-
closnres. The reference in the text sufficiently explains the opinions of the
writer in regard to commerce.'

the " Wealth of Nations''

247

very best of the political tracts published in the seventeenth century,
and contain many original remarks, and much curious and interesting
information. He seems to have been the first person who has dis-
tinctly laid down, though only in a cursory and incidental manner,
the fundamental doctrine, that the value of commodities is determined
by the quantities of labour required for their production. In his trea-
tise On Taxes and Contributions," he says, If a man bring to
London an ounce of silver out of the earth in Peru, in the same time
that he can produce a bushel of corn, the one is the natural price of
the other; now, if) hy reason of new and more easie mines, a man can
get two ouncrs of silver as easily as formerly he did one, then corn will
be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as if was before at fve shillings,

cccteris paribus.''^ Let a hundred men work ten years upon corn,

and the same number of men the same time upon silver ; I say that
the neat proceed of the silver is the price of the whole neat proceed of
the corn ; and like parts of the one the price of like parrs of the other :"
and, in another place, he observes, Corn will be twice as dear when
there are two hundred husbandmen to do the same work which an hundred
could perform^ * — Int, Dis. p. xxix.

It is to be borne in mind, that this statement is only true in
the long run, and of things produced under the absence of
monopoly. That two things took the same quantity of labour,
is not by itself a sufficient reason why one shall exchange for
the other. It may be that nobody wants one of the things at
all, or wants the existing quantity at that price. The man who
engraved the Lord's Prayer on a grain of wheat, might sell a
single grain for the price of his maintenance during the opera-
tion ; but certainly not a bushel, still less a quarter. As the
statement stands here by itself, there is therefore an element
missed out ; which if it has not led to mischief, may do.

^ In the Quatitulumcunque, the subject of money is treated with
great ability, and the idea of draining England of her cash by an
unfavourable balance, successfully combated. Sir William has also
strongly condemned the laws regulating the rate of interest, justly
observing that there might as well be laws to regulate the rate of ex-
change or of insurance.' f

' The essays on Political Arithmetic are too well known to require
any particular notice in this place. But the Political Anatomy of Ire-
land, though perhaps the best of all Sir William Petty's political
works, is now comparatively neglected. This treatise is not more
valuable for the accurate iniormation it affords respecting the state of
Ireland in the latter part of the seventeenth century, than for the ju-
dicious reflections and suggestions of the author, with a view to its
improvement. Sir William was fully aware of the benefits that would
result from an incorporating union between Great Britain and Ireland,

* ' See Treatise on Taxes and Contributions, ed. 16/9, pp. 31, 24, and 67.'
t ' Pp. 3, 6, 8, orig. edit.'

248

Mcculloch's Edition of

and from the establishment of a perfectly free intercourse between the
two countries. When speaking of the Act passed in 1664, prohibiting
the importation of cattle, beef, &c. from Ireland into Britain, he asks
If it be good for England to keep Ireland a distinct kingdom, why
do not the predominant party in Parliament, suppose the western
members, make England beyond Trent another kingdom, and take
tolls and customs upon the borders ? Or why was there ever any union
between England and Wales ? And why may not the entire kingdom
of England be further cantonised for the advantage of all parties P " *
— Int. Dis. p. XXX.

By far the most valuable relic, however, is preserved in the
Discourses of Sir Dudley North.

* But a tract, entitled, Discourses on Trade , principallij directed to
the Cases of Interest^ Coinage, Clipping^ and Increase of Money, written
by Sir Dudley North, and published in 1691, unquestionably contains
a far more able statement of the true principles of commerce than any
that had then appeared. Sir Dudley is throughout the intelligent ad-
vocate of all the great principles of commercial freedom. He is not,
like the most eminent of his predecessors, well informed on one sub-
ject, and erroneous on another. His system is consentaneous in its
parts and complete. He shows, that in commercial matters, nations
have the same interests as individuals; and forcibly exposes the ab-
surdity of supposing, that any trade which is advantageous to the
merchant can be injurious to the public. His opinions respecting
the imposition of a seignorage on the coinage of money, and the
expediency of sumptuary laws, then very popular, are equally en-
lightened.'

^ I shall subjoin from the preface to this tract an abstract of the
general propositions maintained in it : '

That the whole world as to trade is but as one nation or people, and
therein nations are as personsJ*^

^' That the loss of a trade with one nation is not that only, sepa-
rately considered, but so much of the trade of the world rescinded and
lost, for all is combined together."

That there can be no trade unprofitable to the public ; for if any
prove so, men leave it off ; and wherever the traders thrive, the publiCf
of which they are a part, thrive also.^^ — Int. Dis. p. xxxii.

In the last proposition, care must be taken mentally to in-
clude " in a state of freedom." For the very trick of the rob-
bers of the public is to maintain, that where robbing traders
thrive, *' the public, of which they are a part, thrive also."

That to force men to deal in any prescribed manner may profit
such as happen to serve them ; but the public gains not, because it is
taking from one subject to give to another."

" That no laws can set prices in trade, the rates of which must and
will make themselves. But when such laws do happen to lay any hold,

« ' P. 34, edit. 1719.'

the Wealth of Nations*'

249

it is so much impediment to trade, and therefore prejudicial." — Int.
Dist p. xxxiii.

Sir Dudley would have made these propositions stronger
still, if he had lighted on a distinct vision of the fact, that all
that is given to one trader by interference of any kind, is taken
once from the consumer, and once over again from some other
trader with whom the consumer would have spent the difference
in question.

" That money is a merchandise, whereof there may be a glut, as
well as a scarcity, and that even to an inconvenience." — Int, Dis,
p. xxxiii.

This probably alluded chiefly to the business of a money-
dealer. As for example, the dealer in the neighbourhood of
the Exchange whose trade it is to supply napoleons to gentle-
men going to Calais or Boulogne, must find out that it is as
easy for him to have too many or too few for his demand, as it
would be if he dealt in pounds of sugar. And the like phseno-
menon must be traceable on the greater scale. But this does
not go far into the money question ; though an observation of
this kind is probably with most men the first stepping-stone to
further knowledge.

^* That a people cannot want money to serve the ordinary dealing,
and more than enough they will not have."

That no man will be the richer for the making much money, nor
have any part of it, but as he buys it for an equivalent price." — Int.
Dis. p. xxxiii.

These propositions indicate farther insight than the last ;
and they only want improving into the demonstration, that as
concerns the abstract power of carrying on the exchanges of
the public, the quantity of money is a thing indifferent ; — be-
cause the smaller quantity will rise in value till it is enough to
perform the office wanted, and the greater quantity will sink
in value till it does no more. This does not include the effects
of altering the value of money on debtors and creditors, nor
the case where the quantity of money should be inefficient
through lack of subdivision ; and Sir Dudley manifestly meant
the same.

That the free coynage is a perpetual motion found out, whereby
to melt and coyn without ceasing, and so to feed goldsmiths and
coyners at the public charge." — Int* Dis. p. xxxiii.

There appears to be some inexactness in this. The system
alluded to must have been one, not of coining and melting, but
of coining and sending abroad. If some men had wanted to

250

Mcculloch's Edition of

coin and others to melt, they would have exchanged and saved
themselves the trouble. But people were encouraged to coin,
by the offer of doing it at the public expense, whereby the ex-
changeable value of the coin was necessarily levelled to the
value of the metal contained in it ; and then they found out,
that this coined metal was as convenient as any other, and
rather more so, for making purchases abroad. In which the
folly was simply in the government's not finding out, that it
was trying to fill a sieve with water, and expending the public
public money in coining without any adequate reason.

" That debasing the coyn is defrauding one another, and to the
public there is no sort of advantage from it ; for that adnaits no
character or value, but intrinsick."

That the sinking by alloy or weight is all one." — Int. Dis. p.
xxxiii.

There has been much darkness vipon what has been called
debasing the coin ; and despotic princes have probably been
sometimes accused of an imaginary crime like witchcraft. If
the coin is debased as it is called, till it is as thin as paper, —
or till it is reduced to a piece of gold-leaf which must be
pasted on a piece of paper to support it, — or if the ingenuity is
carried the further step of issuing the paper without the gold-
leaf, but with the image and superscription of the reigning
king, or of Abraham Newland, or of any other creature in
heaven or earth or in the waters under the earth that shall
have the effect of preventing imitation or forgery; — if all
this be done, there is not evil done but good, so long as the
number of such coins or substitutes for coins is not increased
beyond a certain limit. If the sovereign happens to be
acting in the interest of his people, as for instance if the
operation was intended as the means of carrying on a war
of just defence, — he would only have stumbled on a way of
raising money without the people feeling how. And if he
is acting against the interests of the people, it is as well he
should take value in a way they do not feel, as in a way
they do. It is true that if the people were intelligent enough,
they would see the value applied to their own use, and bring
the Brother of the Sun and Moon to account for its disposal.
But this is going beyond the age. To the present moment,
not even the inhabitants of the United States of America have a
distinct and general vision of the fact, that a people can demand
of its government to save the whole difference of the expense
between a gold and paper currency, and to account to the
people for the proceeds as rigidly as for a malt-tax. It would
therefore be unreasonable to demand this nicety from the
despot.

the " Wealth of Nations:'

251

" That exchange and ready money are the same, nothing but car-
riage and re-carriage being saved."

" That money exported in trade is an increase to the wealth of the
nation ; but spent m war, and payments abroad, is so much impove-
rishment."

In short, that all favour to one trade, or interest, is an abuse y
and cuts so much of f refit from the public:''

^ Unhickily this admirable tract never obtained any considerable
circulation. There is good reason indeed for supposing that it was
designedly suppressed*. At ail events, it speedily became excessively
scarce : and I am not aware that it has ever been referred to by any
subsequent writer on commerce.' — Int. Dis, p. xxxiii.

Sir Dudley North may be considered as a kind of Wyclif of
economical reform, of which Adam Smith was to be the Luther.
There was manifestly a great outpouring on him, considering
the darkness of his day.

* A violent controversy had been carried on for some years pre-
viously to 1700, with respect to the policy of permitting the impor- ^
tation of East India silks and cotton stuffs. Those who wished to
prevent their importation, resorted to the arguments universally made
use of on such occasions ; affirming that the substitution of manu-
factured India goods in the place of those of England had been the
means of ruining a large proportion of our manufacturers, of causing
the exportation of the coin, and the general impoverishment of the
country. The merchants interested in the India trade could not, as
had previously happened to them in the controversy with respect to
the exportation of bullion, meet these arguments without attacking the
principles on which they rested, and maintaining, in opposition to
them, that it was for the advantage of every people to buy the pro-
ducts they wanted in the cheapest market. This just and sound prin-
ciple was, in consequence, enforced in several petitions presented to
Parliament by the importers of India goods ; and it was also enforced
in several publications that appeared at the time. Of these, an
anonymous tract, entitled, Considerations on the East India Trade,
printed iu 1701, seems one of the best. The atithor, who is a person
of no common talent, has endeavoured to refute the various arguments
advanced in justification of the prohibition against importing East
India goods, and has also given some very striking and admirable
illustrations of the effects of the division of labour, and of the advan-
tages resulting from the employment of machinery.'

' In answer to the objection that the manufactured goods imported
from India are the produce of the labour of fewer hands than those
made in England, and that by allowing them to be imported, some of
our people must be thrown out of employment, we have the following
conclusive statements : — '

" The East India trade destroys no profitable Enghsh manufac-

* • See the Hon. Roger North's Life of his Brother, the Hon. Sir Dudley
North, p. 179.'

252

M'^Culloch's Edition of

ture ; it deprives the people of no employment which we should wish
to be jireseived. The foundation of this complaint is that manufac-
tures are procured from the East Indies by the labour of fewer people
than are necessary to make the same in England ; and this shall be
admitted. Hence it follows that to reject the Indian manufactures
that like may be made by the labour of more hands in England, is to
eaijiloy many to do the work that may be done as well by few ; is to
employ all, more than are nece.-sary to procure such things from the
East Indit Sjtodo work that may be done as well without them."

" A saw mill with a pair or two of hands, will split as many boards as
thirty men without this mill ; if then the use of this mill shall be re-
jected, that thirty may be employed to do the work, eight and twenty
are employed more than are necessary, or are employed to do
a work that may be as well done without them. So if by any art,
or trade, or engine, the labour of one can produce as much for our
consumption, or other use, as can otherwise be procured only by the
labour of two or three ; if this art, or trade, or engine, shall be rejected,
if three shall be employed to do the work of one, two are employed
more than are necessary, or to profit of the kingdom. For if the pro-
vidence of God should provide corn for England as manna heretofore
for Israel, the people would not be well employed to plough, and sow,
and reap, for no more corn than might be had without this labour.
Wherefore to employ more hands to manufacture things in England
than are necessary to procure the like from India, is to employ so
many to no profit that might otherwise be profitably employed. For
there can be no want of profitable employment so long as England is
not built, beautified, and improved to the utmost perfection ; so long
as we either have or can produce any thing that others want, or that
they have any thing that we want."

We are very fond of being restrained to the consumption of Eng-
lish manufactures, and, therefore, contrive laws either directly or by
high customs, to prohibit all that come from foreign countries. By
this time 'tis easy to see some of the natural consequences of this
prohibition : — "

" 'Tis to oblige things to be provided by the labour of many, which
might as well be done by few ; 'tis to oblige many to labour to no
purpose, to no profit of the kingdom, nay, to throw away their labour
which otherwise might be profitable. 'Tis to provide the conveniences
of life at the dearest and most expensive rates, to labour for things
that might be had without. 'Tis all one as to bid us refuse bread or
clothes, though the providence of God or bounty of our neighbours
should bestow them on us; 'tis all one as to destroy an engine or navi-
gable river, that the work which is done by few may be done by
many

" As often as I consider these things, I am ready to say with my-
self, that God has bestowed his blessings upon men that have neither
hearts nor skill to use them. For, why are we surrounded with the
sea ? Surely that our wants at home might be supplied by our navi-
gation into other countries. By this we taste the spices of Arabia, yet
never ft;el the scorching sun that brings them forth ; we shine in silks

the Wealth of Nations.-'

253

which our hands have never wrought ; we drink of vineyards which
we never planted ; the treasures of those mines are ours, in which we
have never digged ; we only plough the deep and reap the harvest of
every country in the world." *

' But thfse arguments, however conclusive and unanswerable they
may now appear, made but little impression when they were pub-
lished ; and an Act was soon after passed prohibiting the importation
of East India manufactured goods for home consumption.' — Int, Dis.
p. x).

All that can be suggested to be added to the reasoning of
this anonymous writer is, that it should have been wound up
into the demonstration, that if an Englishman obtained a hand-
kerchief for six shillings instead of ten through the interven-
tion of the India trade, he had four shillings the more to
expend on some English trader : and consequently to stop the
India trade was depriving some English trader of both the six
shillings and the four, to give them to another, and robbing the
wearer of handkerchiefs of four shillings besides. And the
ways the wearers of handkerchiefs would have discovered of
spending the four shillings if they had been left with them,
constitute the " no want of profitable employment" the writer
speaks of. And the same with the money saved to the con-
sumers by machinery.

* In 1744, Sir Matthew Decker, an extensive merchant, published
his Essay on the Causes of the Decline of Foreign Trade. This essay
has been frequently referred to by Dr. Smith, and it deserved bis
notice. Sir Matthew is a most intelligent and decided enemy of all
restrictions, monopolies, and prohibitions whatever. To give full free-
dom to industry — he proposes that all corporation privileges should be
abolished ; and that all the existing taxes should be repealed, and re-
placed by a single tax laid on the consumers of luxuries, proportion-
ally to their incomes. The following extracts will give an idea of the
spirit which j)ervades Sir Matthew's work, and of the ability with
which it is written : — '

Trade cannot, will not, be forced ; let other nations prohibit, by
what severity they please, interest will prevail ; they may embarrass
their own trade, but cannot hurt a nation, whose trade is free, so much
as themselves. Spain has prohibited our woollens ; but had a reduc-
tion of our taxes brought them to their naturalvalue only, they would
be the cheapest in Europe of their goodness, consequently must be
more demanded by the Spaniards, be smuggled into their country in
spite of their government, and sold at better prices ; their people would
be dearer clothed, with duties and prohibitions, than without, conse-
quently must sell their oil, wine, and other commodities, dearer ;

* * Pp. 51, 52, &c. It is probable that Addison had the concluding para-
graph now quoted in his eye when he wrote his admirable paper on Commerce.
See Spectator, No. 69.'

254

Mcculloch's Edition of

wheveby other nations, raising the like growths, would gain ground
upon them, and their balance of trade grow less and less. But should
we, for that reason, prohibit their commodities ? By no means ; for
the dearer they grow, no more than what are just necessary will be
used ; their prohibition does their own business ; some may be necessary
for us ; what are so^ we should not make dearer to our own people ;
some may be proper to assort cargoes for other countries, and why
should we prohibit our people that advantage ? Why hurt our-
selves TO HURT THE SPANIARDS ? If we would retaliate cfFectually
upon them for their ill-intent, handsome premiums given to our plan-
tations to raise the same growths as Spain might enable them to
supply us cheaper than the Spaniards could do, and establish a trade
they could never return. Premiums may gain trade, but prohibitions
will destroy zV."''*

' Sir Matthew applies the same argument to expose the absurdity
and injurious effect of our restraints on the trade with France.
" Would any wise dealer in London," he asks, buy goods of a
Dutch shopkeeper for 15d. or 18d. when he could have the same from
a French shopkeeper for Is. ? Would he not con-ider, that, by so
doing, he would empty his own pockets the sooner, and that, in the
end, he would greatly injure his own family by such whims ? And
shall this nation commit an nbmrdity that stares every private man in
the face f — The certain way to be secure is to be more powerful, that
is, to extend our trade as far as it is capable of; and as restraints
liave proved its ruin, to reject them, and depend on freedom for our
security ; bidding defiance to the French, or any nation in Europe,
that took umbrage at our exerting our natural advantages." f — Int.
Dis, p. xlvi.

It is conceived that these extracts from the history of the
fathers of commercial freedom when we get it, can scarcely
fail to be interesting at the present moment, when the fabric of
corruption and absurdity is in the act of falling to pieces. And
to give any the smallest impulse to such a process, will be held
of more utility, than any quantity of contest on disputable
points which might have been discovered among the mass se-
lected from.

The Second Section is in part occupisd with attacks on Adam
Smith, which after all may be characterized as small, and which
may probably be better met as they appear among the Notes.
The Third Section commences with a just tribute to the Essay
of Mr. Malthus ; as " the first" great contribution to the science
of Political Economy, made subsequently to the publication of
the Wealth of Nations. It would not have been the less just,
if there had been added " the last." The greatest ostensible
portion of what has been produced since, has been doing and
undoing. Political economy has to the eye appeared to retro-

* ♦ p. lf)3.'

t ' p. 184.'

" the Wealth of Nations:'

255

grade ; though there can be no doubt that on the whole the
materials were accumulating for extensive progression. Two
or three major mistakes, rashly entered into, and pertinaciously
adhered to rather than defended, have distracted the public
mind, and given cause to the Philistines to mock ; but the in-
telhgence of the community is growing up over the sore, and
then the healthy action will go on. In the mean time, the most
useful addition that could be made to the investigations of
Malthus, would be to direct attention to the means of removing
the limit, of which he has demonstrated the consequences and
the evils. In a state where commerce is prohibited by Act of
Parliament, and the exchange of labour repressed by penal
statutes, it is stopping needlessly short of the mark to demon-
strate the evil of being shut up, and abstain from inquiring why
the shutting up should be continued.

The first Note (in Volume I. page 9) is on the precise mean-
ing of wealth ; which after all, only means welhheing, or what
man wants as the instruments thereto. It means what he wants
and has some difficulty in obtaining ; and not what he does not
want because he has it whether he will or no. With this un-
derstanding, the definition is sufficiently exact ; and it is better
than that which makes a reference to value, because it includes
it. It does not appear that i\.dam Smith has left any practical
doubt of his meaning being the same.

The Note on Book T. Chap. T. in Vol. I. p. 20, charges
Smith's comparison between the agriculture of rich and poor
countries, with having totally neglected the comparative fer-
tility of soils." This can hardly be just, when he uses the ex-
press words (p. 19), Their lands [those of opulent nations]
are in general better cultivated, and having more labour and
expense bestowed upon them, 'produce more in proportion to
the extent and natural fertility of the ground:^ The conclu-
sion of the Note merges into the cart-before -the-horse mistake
of Mr. Ricardo upon Rent.

The Note on the Chapter on the Division of Labour (I. 34)
is all directed against figures of straw. Adam Smith never
said that division of labour was introduced into pin-making
because one man had an " innate propensity to make the
head of a pin and another the point; but because (p. 17) ten
persons could" in this manner " make among them upwards of
forty-eight thousand pins in a day ; but if they had all wrought
separately and independently, they certainly could not each of
them have made twenty." And in like manner the savage that
makes bows and arrows (p. 32), does it because " he finds that
he can in this manner get more cattle and venison, than if he
himself went to the field to catch them.'' The Note appears

256

M^^Culloch's Edition of

to be hung upon the fact of Adam Smith having in one place
attributed the division of labour to " the propensity to truck,
barter, and exchange one thing for another," without adding
the words " with a view to gain by it."

In the place to which a Note is appended in I. 60, Adam
Smith merely said, that ** rents which have been reserved in
corn have preserved their value much better than those which
have been reserved in money." If any error has been commit-
ted, it at all events does not seem to have been here.

The passage incriminated in I. 71, involves no error. It ex-
plains the mystery which must have presented itself to every man
of middle age in this country, — the mystery of thin sixpences.
The truth is that the inferior coins are always mere counters ;
and may as well be so as not, saving the temptations that may
arise to counterfeit, which is not a good, though the evil may
not be so immediate and terrible as has been imagined.

The " fundamental error" alleged against Adam Smith's
Chapter on " The Component Parts of the Price of Commodi-
ties" in I. 8], is not either clearly made out, or very distinctly
stated. The bearing seems to be, that changes arising from
variations in profits, wages, and rent, will affect all commodi-
ties alike, and therefore their relative value cannot alter. Now
even supposing this to be the case, it was not a bad preliminary
process which went to show how there was a tendency for any
particular commodity to vary in value from certain causes, even
though there should be an ultimate tendency for other commo-
dities at the same time to vary in the same direction. But
there is no difficulty in finding a commodity whose value shall
vary separately, and precisely from that source which Adam
Smith has expressed under the name of rent. Coim is admitted
by the author himself (See his Introductory Discourse, p.lxxv.)
to rise in value with the progress of population ; and the excess
of this value over the average expense of production goes to the
landlord as rent, which is evidently what Adam Smith meant
by constituting rent.'' What then becomes of the allegation
in I. 81 ? There assuredly must be a mistake in this principle
of affecting all commodities alike. It is the same that has led
to the theory of the impossibihty of a Glut. There is a perpe-
tual motion, an argument in a circle, in it somewhere.

If monopoly prices are not always the highest which can be
got," it is only in those rare cases where the monopolist is in a
mood to give away. The occasion for the correction in I. 103
appears therefore to be small.

The Note in I. 162, bearing that prices, generally speaking,
are the same, whether profits or wages are high or low," must
at all events be vaguely expressed, and appears admirably cal-

the Wealth of Nations:'

257

culated to excite an outcry against political economy. If it
meant that a variation in one of the two things profit and wages,
has a tendency to be absorbed by an opposite variation in the
other, which prevents any effect from reaching the consumer, —
this should have been expressed in a guarded manner, and not
left open to the interpretation that both profits and wages may
be what they will, without any effect upon prices ; which can
only be true of things produced under a monopoly.

In the suggestion of exaggeration of the injuries arising from
corporation privileges (in I. 197), one item against the corpo-
rations is overlooked, which is, — that they cause the introduc-
tion to the several trades and mysteries to take place by the
tedious, the roundabout, and the wasteful way, instead of the
speedy and economical, and to indemnify themselves for ante-
cedent sufferings from this source, if for nothing else, their
members will assuredly " form an effectual combination for a
rise of prices."

The Note in I. 208 says, that ** Industry is not really, upon
an average, better rewarded in towns than in the country ; but
traders and manufacturers residing in a town have, as Dr.
Smith has already explained, a greater field for the prosecution
of their industry, or greater opportunities for making a fortune
by the employment of a large capital," the result of which is,
as explained by Dr. Smith, that a hundred make fortunes in
towns for one in the country. Query, whether this is not being
better rewarded.

The Note on Rent in 1. 237 makes the first material intro-
duction of the great vexation of the class of political economists
from whom it proceeds. Rent is not a consequence of the de-
creasing productiveness of the soils successively brought into
cultivation ; and for this good reason, that it exists equally
where there is no difference in the productiveness of soils, and
no successively bringing into cultivation. It exists in Egypt,
where a man may stand with one foot in the rich arable soil,
and the other in the dominions of Typhon, as some have con-
strued him, or sand ; and it clearly would exist in an island of
the South Sea, if such there were, where every inch of soil
down to the sea-beach should be of the same uniform quality
as a citizen's cabbage-garden at Peckham, from the moment
the population began to press against the produce. " It is
never heard of in newly settled countries — in New Holland,
Illinois, or Indiana, or in any country where none but the best
of the good soils are cultivated ;" nor would it be heard of in
the South Sea island, while the land was newly settled, or till
the population began to press against the produce. If there be
inferior land in existence, then as population begins to press,

VOL. II. R

258

Mcculloch's Edition of

tins inferior land will successively be taken into cultivation, in
the South Sea island, or anywhere else. But why will this par-
ticular school of political economists insist on mystifying their
fellow-creatures, by putting the cart before the horse, and de-
claring to be the general cause, what is only an accidental con-
sequence, arising out of foreign circumstances which may exist
or may not? Could the art of man have invented a more likely
way to go wrong? They say it is a verbal difference. If so,
why will they not give it up ? At all events they have not satis-
fied weak brethren, that it is only a verbal difference. The
admission that high or low rent is the effect and not the cause
of high or low price (Note in I. 241), is almost a concession of
the whole. It is admitted that there is high rent because prices
ai*e high ; but what makes prices high ? Answer, because there
is inferior land ; for they say there would be no rent unless the
lands " under cultivation be of different powers'' {See quotation
next below) and " unless inferior lands are taken into tillage,"
ergo the existence of inferior land is the cause of rent ; also
rent, they say, is not the cause but the effect of high prices,
ergo the existence of inferior land must cause rent by previously
causing high prices, — there is no other way of piecing the two
into a whole. If then the inferior land were sunk into the sea,
would there cease to be high prices ? According to their rea-
soning there ought. Yet it will be very difficult to persuade
the world, that prices would not be higher from such a circum-
stance, or that the effect of the rise upon the lucky owners of
the good land left, would not be to raise their rents. But the
fEict is that in many parts of the present work, there are traces
of a desire to escape from the bad position, without carrying
it into its consequences. The Ricardo mistake is stuck to in
some places, and in others it is virtually given up ; which is
not fair.

If there were any doubt whether it had really been main-
tained that the essential and indispensable cause of rent was
difference in soils, the following Note in I. 263 would appear
to be decisive.

* In point of fact, however^ no portion of this surplus will go to
the landlord unless the rice fields under cultivation be of different
productive powers. The best lands in Indiana are probably as fertile
as the best lands in East Lothian, and yet they yield no surplus in the
shape of rent to the proprietor ; nor will they ever yield any unless
inferior lands are taken into tillage.' — I. 263.

There is no escaping from the fact, that the existence of rent
is here stated to depend, not upon an increase of demand which
shall carry the price offered for the rice to more than the ave-
rage cost price, but upon " the rice fields being of different

the " Wealth of Nations:''

259

productive powers." This is simply the mistake which the
commentator escapes from every now and then, when the con-
sequences press closest; but cannot make up his mind to
avow.

In L 276, Adam Smith means something quite different
from v/hat is brought forward in the Note ; and the Note
brings nothing against him. The demand for coals produces
the offer of a certain price ; the owner of the most fertile
coal mine (including evidently, in Adam Smith's meaning,
the greatest and most extensive coal mine) has to a certain ex-
tent a power of underselling his neighbours, and therefore in a
certain degree can regulate and keep down the price of coals.
This is Adam Smith's assertion ; and the Note only holds of
the besetment of the authors school on the subject of Rent.

On the profits of silver mines (on which there is no difference
of opinion between the commentator and his original) two
powerful reasons exist why speculators in this country should
speculate upon disappointment. In the first place, supposing
their agents in foreign countries to be ever so unexceptionable
in integrity and zeal, their employers at home, from the very
nature of the pursuit, may always rely on exaggerated repre-
sentations of tlie chances of success. It is not in the nature
of man to go on such an errand, and not make the most of his
expectations for tomorrow. And secondly, if the success should
be ever so great in point of quantity, this very success must
have an effect in pulling down prices, vastly more rapid than
anybody is likely to calculate upon. From these two causes,
no business upon earth might be so safely betted against, as the
business of the silver miners.

On the fallacy charged against Adam Smith on the subject
of corn in I. 307, it is desirable to remark that what he says is
not that corn is, upon an average, the most invariable of all
commodities in its value," (which, as taken from p. Ixxiv. of
the commentator's Introductory Discourse, was possibly the
understanding of the commentator) ; but that *' the raising of
equal quantities of corn in the same soil and climate, will, at
an average, require nearly equal quantities of labour, or what
comes to the same thing, the price of nearly equal quantities.''
The two propositions differ by the whole difference between
value and cost. A bushel of corn may be conceived to be
raised in value by the pressure of population and corn laws, to
the value of its bulk in gold ; but it does not follow that the cost
of raising an average bushel of corn will thereby be raised in
anything like the same proportion. The commentator has gone
aground on that perpetual rock of his order, the fact that such
a price of corn would cause its cultivation to be pushed into
R 2

260

M^CuIloch's Edition of

some nooks and crannies where for instance nine-tenths of a
bushel of gold might be expended to secure the whole one.

The Note in ^I. 347, like another before remarked, is worded
in a way to give rejoicement to the enemy. That

*the proportion between the average values of any number of freely
produced commodities depends upon the comparative cost of their
production, and is not in the slightest degree influenced by the quan-
tities of them brought to market/

may be true under explanation, but looks fearfully like a paradox
without. The missing solution is, that the quantities brought
to market will in the long run be such as will keep the average
values proportioned to the comparative costs of production. It
cannot be said this is happy.

In the Note in I. 407 where it is said that ** the condition of
all the other classes is as much improved by a decline in the
value of manufactured goods, as that of the landlords," it surely
is not intended to maintain, that the condition of the manufac-
turers is as much improved. It may be improved to a certain
extent ; that is, a certain deduction may be made for the part
which falls on themselves as consumers. If Wedgewood's ware
falls in value, Mr. Wedgewood may congratulate himself that
he drinks tea out of a cheaper tea-pot. And in the same way of
other orders of manufacturers. But it may be vehemently
doubted whether their condition is " as much improved as that
of the landlords." This is another instance of inaccuracies put
forward in the shape of most impolitic paradoxes.

In Dr. Smith's assertion (1.408) that *' the proprietors of
land never can mislead the public with a view to promote the
interest of their own particular order, at least if they have any
tolerable knowledge of that interest,^' — it is feared he must
stand principally on the reservation in italics. When the poor-
rates have eaten up a little more of the landlords' rents, they
will begin to find out that they have not had any tolerable
knowledge of that interest.

In the Note in Volume II. p. 5, the definition of Capital ac-
cumulates ideas which it should be the object of science to
separate. Capital, is wealth employed in the production of
other wealth. Adam Smith does not always confine it to this
sense ; but the business of an improver is to discern. A horse
yoked to a gentleman's carriage, is wealth being enjoyed, not
wealth employed in the production of other wealth ; unless
perhaps the gentleman should be a visiting physician. The same
horse yoked to a brewer's dray, is not wealth being enjoyed, but
wealth employed in the production of other wealth. The brewer
does not exult in his horse by reason of the pleasure of seeing

the Wealth of Nations ^

261

him draw, but by reason of the pleasure he expects from the
possession of the proceeds. The question is not of capacity^
for all horses may be capable ; but it is of what the horse does.
To say that all horses are ** capital " because they are capable,
would be Hke saying that all men are " fathers of families " for
the like reason. If any person insists on employing the term
" capital for everything that is of value, he must do it if he
pleases ; but the other is the application which is useful.

Adam Smith stopped short in a metaphor, when he spoke of
" the channel of circulation " and the necessity that whatever
is poured into it beyond a certain sum must overflow (II. 31),
To have gone into the subject, would have led him to the prin-
ciple of depreciation ; one of the most important at the present
moment that can be named. But it is impossible for a man to
have done everything.

When Adam Smith said (II. 78) that gold and silver money
" is a very valuable part of the capital * of a country, which
produces nothing to the country," he plainly meant, " produces
nothing but its effect as the instrument of exchange, which
paper might do as well." An honest issue of paper money, —
which means issuing the paper by means of a national Office
and crediting the public with the amount of issues,— e^ow^
" convert a great part of this dead stock into active and produc-
tive stock." It would turn the unnecessary gold, into gold as
active and productive as any other in the hands of bullion
dealers. To substitute cheap in the place of dear instruments
of exchange" (Notes II. 78), is in fact to do this with all that
before was employed to waste.

There is a much more effectual way than compelling bankers
to give ampl€ security for their notes," to protect the public
against their insolvency and bad conduct " (Note II. 84) ;
which is, to allow them to issue none. Every note issued by
private bankers, is so much of the public property given away
by the government for sinister purposes, in the same way as if
men were allowed to wheel away the pitch and tar out of the
dockyards. There are two perfectly distinct functions, which it
is the interest of the public enemy to confound ; the function of
discounting, lending, and keeping cash accounts, which is bank-
ing, — and the function of making paper money. The first is a
trade ; and ought like other trades to be carried on by indivi-
duals and not by the government. The other is not a trade, but
an exercise of publicpower ; and ought to be exercised for the
public, and not for individuals.

* This is an instance where Adam Smith uses ** capital " in the too extended
ssnse.

262

M^Gulloch's Edition of

The distinction "between '* productive " and " unproductive "
labour, appears to have been most unfortunate in its terms. It
clearly was not meant to say, that there was labour that pro-
duced nothing ; for if so, wherefore was it laboured ? And if
Kemble is an unproductive labourer, why is not a ploughman,
a grazier, or a brewer ? There is about as much left of one man's
performances as the other's, the day after the enjoyment. The
only substantial distinction that can be set up among species of
labour, is analogous to that formerly stated between ''capital''
and wealth applied to direct enjoyment. There may be labour
employed for the production of things which are useful as they
lead to the production of other things, and there may belabour
for the production of things that are to be enjoyed in their
own proper substance. A corollary may be held to be, that all
labour of the first kind is exerted with a view to its being ac-
cessory to labour of the second ; for no man labours for labour's
sake, but that somebody may enjoy. The terms *' productive '*
and '* unproductive," may on the whole be surmised to have
arisen out of a confused notion of labour w^ell and ill em-
ployed.

The Note in II, 150, is full of the Ricardo mistake on Rent.
At the same time there can be no doubt that Adam Smith had
not entirely escaped from the mist of the Yxenoh. Economistes ;
whose error lay in not discovering that the wonderful powers
attributed to earth and rent, were all resolvable into one man
taking from another man by virtue of a monopoly,

Adam Smith would not have said, that to expect that the
freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great
Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia
should ever be established in it" (II. 305), if he had possessed
a clear vision of the fact, that everything which is gained to
anybody in consequence of prohibition, is lost twice over, once
bv the consumers, and once more by the English traders on
whom they would have spent the difference. Wait till the
knowledge of this becomes vernacular.

Adam Smith's digression on the Bank of Amsterdam (in his
Fourth Book, Ch. 3) may be noted as leading to the solution
of one of the most curious problems in the range of political
mathematics,— the mode of production of the phsenomenon
called an Agio. A piece of paper shall pass for four, five, or
fourteen per cent more than the coins it purports to represent, in
consequence of certain conveniences and superiorities which are
perhaps visibly not worth more than half-a-crown : and, which
is the most curious point, these conveniences shall be obtained
for nothing by the circulator after all, for he passes the paper
for the same value that he received it, without ever deducting

the " Wealth of Nations ^ ' 263

the half-crown. There may be reason to believe that the expla-
nation of this phgenomenon is the experimentum crucis of that
theory of the value of currency, which maintains that the value
of a currency, metallic or paper, may be raised to any level by
merely limiting its quantity ; a theory which the author (Note
II. 90) has been observed as receiving with assent.
In the Note in III. 10 it is stated, that

* Profits are the excess, or the value of the excess, of the commodi-
ties produced by the expenditure of a certain quantity of capital and
labour, over that original quantity of capital and labour, or its value.
It is clear, therefore, [why f], that they must be wholly unaffected by
the mere extension of the field for the employment of capital, how
great soever that extension may be.'

The query that arises on this is, whether all extension of the
field for the employment of capital, is not attended at the time
with an increase of the rate of profits, and whether this is not
the very instrument of inviting capital to occupy the new open-
ing. There seems to be a confusion of the effect after capital
has run in, with the effect during the running in.

On the Note in III. 139 it may be observed, that the error of
the Economistes did not lie in the direction there stated, but, as
before intimated, in the non-discovery that all that was got for
rent by one man was taken from another.

The restriction of banking companies in England to not more
than six partners, reduced in 1826 (see Note III. 262) to a
circle of sixty- five miles round London, is a subject often
brought into debate at the present conjuncture. If the pitch
and tar in the dock-yards were allowed to be wheeled away
by companies of six, and the question were whether it should
be allowed by companies of sixteen, — the solution would
mainly depend on whether anybody was impeded by the restric-
tion. If they are, the restriction is a comparative good ; and
if they are not, no reason is produced for the alteration de-
manded.

The charge of fallacy in the Note III. 420, appears to be un-
tenable. If the producers cannot indemnify themselves for a
tax on profits out of some rent or other, they will give up the
production altogether. It is part of the Ricardo mistake on
"the portion that pays no rent."

The price of sugar from Jamacia (Note III. 482) has at all
events been a monopoly price ever since an extra tax was laid
upon the sugars that might compete. The fact that every in-
dividual who pleases may carry his capital and industry to
Jamaica and become a producer of sugar, is as much beside the
mark, as would be the fact that he may become a grower of
corn under the corn laws.

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The state of the case with respect to Public Debts (IV. 1) is,
that the government seizes upon some sum, as suppose a
hundred milhons, not in its gross shape, but in the shape of
the perpetual annuities which are of ^the same value in the
market ; and then it sells these annuities, to people who are
willing to give the gross sum in return. Hence a hundred
millions raised by funding, is as irrecoverably spent and thrown
away (saving any utility there may be in the objects on which
it is spent) as if it had been raised by a poll-tax of 100^. apiece
on a million of the inhabitants. People may squabble after-
wards about the payment of the interest ; but nothing can
restore the hundred millions. Despots unhappily have found
this out ; and if England is ever overrun by the Holy AUies,
v^hose limbs are in our high places, they will levy the
largest amount they can by funding, as they did in France ;
knowing that to the citizens of England afterwards, the evil
will be as irreparable as the docking of a horse, — they may
carry their tail in any way they like, except putting the old one
on again. Hence that the debt is only owing from one
Englishman to another, is a good argument so far as it is to
prove the impossibility of gaining in the aggregate by refusing
to pay the interest ; — no argument at all, if it is to prove that
the debt is not an enormous evil, for which the authors should
be made responsible if they had not taken care to get out of
the way. In England there is fortunately the option of allow-
ing the country to outgrow the debt by restoring the freedom
of trade and particularly the trade in corn. And if this is not
done, the result will be, first a rush upon the fund-holders, and
then, as this can produce no aggregate improvement, a rush
upon the property of everybody else that has any. For all
which, those who persevere in prohibiting commerce by act of
parliament, will justly be responsible.

Nearly the whole of the Fourth Volume consists of Supple-
mental Dissertations under the title of Notes. The first is on
the definition of Labour. Few persons have hesitated to believe,
that labour means the exertion of living agents, and that it is
not usual to say a steam-engine labours. The reason given in
IV. 77 why we ought to say so, appears highly inconclusive.
It is, that

^ If a capitalist expends the same sum in paying the wages of labourers,
in maintaining horses, or in hiring a machine, and if the men, the
horses, and the machine can all perform the same piece of work, its
value will obviously be the same by whichever of them it may have
been performed.'

From which it is argued, that " whatever actions or operations

the Wealth of Nations,^'

265

have the effect to communicate the same value to the same or
different articles or products," ought " all to he designated by
the same common term." Now the fact is, that the communi-
cating the same value, is the only thing in which there is any
sameness ; and therefore it is this, and not anything else, that
should be designated by the same common term." The whole
of this Note may be considered as a specimen of confounding
instead of discerning.

Note II is on " Value a word on which there has been
infinite debate. The value of a thing [valor\ in the primary
sense, is how much [valet] it is equivalent to, or will fetch of
some other thing or things in exchange. In this sense there
seems as little possibility of assigning value to a thing, without
reference to some other thing, as of assigning ratio. And as
ratio may be defined to be that relation of one magnitude to
another, which is sought by inquiring what multiple, aliquot
part or parts, of the one, is equal to the other ; so value, in the
primary sense, may be defined to be that relation of one sub-
stance to another, which is sought by inquiring what quantity
of the one will voluntarily be given in exchange for an assigned
quantity of the other. But after this relation has been deter-
mined between all imaginable substances respectively and one
particular commodity, which in all civilized societies is money ;
by a slight metastasis, the substances which will exchange for
equal quantities of money are said to be of equal values, and
substances which will exchange for different quantities are
said be of values proportioned to those quantities. And by a
further licence, the value of a thing comes popularly to mean
the quantity of the general measurer, money, for which it will,
at the period that may be in question, exchange. Hence
there appears no difficulty in ascertaining the meaning of value,
when applied to the comparison of objects at the same period
and in the same state of society. But if question were to be
made, of What was the value of silk stockings in the time of
Queen Elizabeth," or " What was the value of a tenpenny nail
in Otaheite on its first discovery by Europeans," it could ap-
parently only be answered by approximation. There need be no
hesitation in stating, that in both these cases the things men-
tioned were of much higher value than in England at this
moment. But if greater precision is insisted on, there seems no
resource but expressing the values by reference to exchangeable
things of some kind, which though they do not necessarily
afford an exact measure, afford something like an approxima-
tion, of the accuracy of which an estimate may at the same time
be made by the inquirer as far as he is able. For example, the
silk stockings or the nail may be stated to have been equal to

266

MCulloch's Edition of

so many days labour of the lowest kind of labourers, or so many
of some higher kind ; though it does not even follow that the
proportion between the numbers presented by these two modes
of expression, should be the same that it would be in England
at this day. Or it might be estimated in hogs ; though it
does not follow that a hog in Otatheite or in Elizabeth's time
may not have been a more lordly dish than in England now.
Value, therefore, like greatness, has in all cases a reference,
direct or implied, to something else. And if there was no one
thing in existence which could be trusted to have precisely the
same proportion in respect of magnitude to other things that it
had in the time of Elizabeth, there would be the same difficulty
in settUng the magnitude of things in thatoera, that there now
is in settling their value.

An intricacy is observable in some parts of the commentator's
work, arising from the intrusion of the fact, that the value of
things produced without monopoly, is perpetually gravitating
towards the cost of production. This may be true, but there is
no use in continually bringing it forward in a way that tempts
the reader to believe they are the same ; for the fact is that
they are never the same, or only for such comparatively rare
periods as a swinging body is at the lowest point. And this
perpetual oscillation on both sides of the cost price, instead of
being an inconsiderable accident, is in reality the great agent
by which the commercial world is kept in motion ; and it de-
pends for its existence on the principles of Monopoly Price, —
the sellers having to a certain degree a monopoly in their
favour whenever the quantity in the market is less than could
be sold at the cost price, and the buyers having an advantage
of a similiar kind when the quantity in the market is more.

Rent, which is the subject of Note III, is another mere
corollary from the principles of Monopoly Price. A monopoly
is when the quantity of a commodity is limited either by nature
or art, so as to cause the competition for it to raise the price
higher than the average cost of production. A monopoly may
be of the kind in which no part of the produce costs compara-
tively more in production than any other part ; as may be the
case with the Eau de Husso?i, which, if as generally surmised
it is only an extract from some common vegetable, might be
made by cart-loads without comparative increase of cost. Or
it may be of the kind where a certain part of the produce is
raised at a somewhat increased cost, though this process may
not be carried so far as that any particular portion of the pro-
duce can be assigned which sells for no more than the cost price ;
as may be the case with Tokay, in the raising of ^vhich it is
probable that there are portions of the vineyard that require

the " Wealth of Nations:'

267

comparatively more labour than some others, but none whose
produce does not sell for more than the cost price,— and more-
over possible enough (for the vine is said to abhor manure),
that there may be no such thing as increasing the produce by
any higher degree of what is called dressing. Or it may be
of the kind in which portions of the produce may be raised at
different costs, up to that which swallows up the whole price ;
as is the case with the corn raised from the various qualities
of land in the hands of the landlords in general. But in all these
cases the principle of Monopoly is one, and the varieties are the
results of the diversity of extraneous circumstances. There is
no more ground for maintaining any difference in the common
principle, than in maintaining that there is a difference in the
principle which causes a man to fall from a church steeple,
a waggon to run down hill, and a bullet to describe a parabola
instead of flying off in the tangent. And this seems to furnish
the reply to an objection received from a highly eminent name
in political economy, against having called Adam Smith's the
** True Theory of Rent." It may be that he did not trace the full
extent of the difference, between a monopoly of class No. 3
like corn, and one of class No. 2 like Tokay ; but if he has
struck out the leading principle of both cases, he may be held
to have a good general claim. A man must leave something
for posterity.

Great part of the Note on Rent is occupied by replies to the
objections urged from various quarters against the unhappy
mistake on the subject of " the portion of produce which yields
no rent," which has had a sensible effect in retarding the progress
of political economy for nearly twenty years. These were con-
clusively answered by Say in the year following their publica-
tion ; whose assertion that " the so called theory of rent, has in-
troduced no new truth into the science of political economy ^
and explains no fact that is not explained more naturally
by the truths that had been previously established"^ might
easily have been carried forward into the demonstration that it
has been productive of extensive practical error.

On one part of the objections the commentator says,

* Besides the objections which have now been examined and xe-
futed, another has been urged from time to time against the theory
of rent, as now explained. The authors of this objection affect to,
suppose that Sir Edward West, Mr. Malthus, and Mr. Ricardo, con-
sidered the cultivation of inferior land as the cause of a high price of
corn. But this, they allege, is to invert the order of the phenomena;

* Say, Vol. iv. ch. 20.

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M^^Culloch's Edition of

the cultivation of inferior soils not being the cause but the effect of
high price, and this high price being itself the effect of demand.
This very doctrine, however, has been explicitly laid down by the
distinguished authors previously referred to, and particularly by Mr.
Ricardo.* They have no where contended that a high price of corn
was caused by the cultivation of inferior land ; what they contend is,
that it is caused by the necessity under which every increasing popu-
lation is placed, of cultivating such inferior land, or being starved.
The wants and desires of man are the cause why all commodities are
produced, and are, by consequence, the cause of their value ; but it
is the difficulty experienced in gratifying these wants and desires, or,
in other words, the cost incurred in the production of commodities,
that measures and regulates this value. This is the theory laid down
by Mr. Ricardo and the other expounders of the doctrines of rent,
and it cannot be in any degree affected by the petty cavils alluded
to.'— IV. 116.

This statement has many inaccuracies. The objection alluded
to, was not that the expounders of the new doctrine maintained
a high price of corn to be caused by the cultivation of inferior
land, but rent ; though it would not have been far wrong if it
had said the other, and the commentator says so himself in this
very book. By a bounty on corn exported from England to
Spain, (IV. 335), he says, " Corn would be permanently re-
" duced [in price] in Spain, because the unusual cheapness of
** the foreign supplies would throw the poorest cultivated lands
** of that country out of tillage ; and it would be permanently
** raised in England, because the increased demand would
** stimulate the bringing of poorer lands under cultivation^
Is this saying " the bringing of poorer lands under cultivation"
is the instrument of '* raising " price, or not ? The upshot
therefore is, that the supporters of the new theory do not always
know what they have said and what not ; and consequently
they say and unsay. All of which is great damage to political
economy.

At the same time the difference between saying that the
cultivation of inferior land causes a high price of corn ^ and that
it causes rent, is intrinsically little or nothing ; for it is only by
causing a high price of corn, that it can be imrgined to cause
rent. Only if instances had been adduced where the cultiva-
tion of inferior land was stated to cause rent, — as for example
in the Note I. 263 of the commentator, before quoted in its or-
der, — the commentator would probably have turned round and
claimed the benefit of the distinction.

The conclusive proof of the weakness of the new theory, was

* * See his Principles of Political Economy,' &c. 3d edit. p. 178.'

the Wealth of Nations:'

269

that it led to conclusions contradicted by experience on the in-
cidence of tithes and poor-rates, consisting in the assertion that
they fell on the consumers. The commentator appears to have
given up both these consequences, but to maintain the
premises. It has therefore become incumbent on him to show,
where the error was which can authorize allowing the conse-
quences to be wrong and the premises right. And it is more
especially required of him, because he is a convert. He formerly
maintained stoutly, that " tithes and other taxes on raw pro-
duce do not form a deduction from rent, but go to increase the
price of produce*." The truth is the commentator has been
driven out of mistakes of his own and other people's by the
** petty cavillers," and is not thankful.

The Notes on Population, on the Consequences of the Use of
the Potato, and on Wages, might all be directed with advantage
into a demonstration of the horrible cruelty and injustice which
prohibits foreign commerce by Act of Parliament. They tell
but half their story ; they discuss the evil, its symptoms, and
its progress, but stop short when they ought to point out the
maintaining cause. It is a cruel joke to talk about the evils of
an increasing population, when that population is cut off by
law from the power of selling the produce of its labour, for the
interest of a robber caste ; who tell us plainly, that like the French
noblesse, they will pay no taxes, unless they may have liberty to
take the amount again from other people, and who, if speedy
change of mind be not vouchsafed them, will come to the same
rough end.

The Note on the Circumstances which determine the Rate
of Profit," is intended for an overthrow of Adam Smith's
opinion on that subject. The reasoning adduced contains an
odd specimen of fallacy. The object is to prove, that though
competition may equalize profits, it cannot reduce their general
amount.

* It is easy to see that competition can never produce a general fall
of profits. All that competition can do, and all that it ever does, is
to reduce the profits obtained in different businesses and employments
to the same common level, to prevent particular individuals from real-
izing greater or lesser profits than their neighbours. But farther than
this competition cannot go. The common and average rate of profit
does not depend on it, but on the excess of the produce obtained by
the employment of a given amount of capital, after replacing that
capital, and every contingent expense. Suppose, for the sake of illustra-
tion, that a manufacturer has a capital of 10,000/., the half of which

* See Art. Taxation in the Supplement to the 4th and 5th Editions of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 630,

270

Mcculloch's Edition of

is expended in buildings and machinery, and the other half in paying
the wages of his workmen, and that his taxes amount to 100/.; sup-
pose now that the produce annually obtained by this manufacturer is
12,000 yards of broad cloth; and that this produce is sufficient, be-
sides replacing the whole of that portion of his capital which is
devoted to the payment of wages, and whatever portion of the fixed
capital may have been wasted, as well as paying his taxes, insurances,
and all other necessary outgoings, to leave him 1,000 yards of cloth,
or 1,000/. of surplus. The profits of this manufacturer would be at
the rate of ten per cent. ; and it is o])vious that they could not be
atfected by the most intense competition. Competition cannot affect
the productiveness of industry? neither can it, speaking generally,
affect the rate of wages, for, such as the demand for labour is, such
will be its supply, and it cannot affect the burden of taxation. It is
plain, therefore, that it can have nothing to do in determining the
com-mon and average rate of profit. It will prevent any individuals
from either getting more, or taking less, than this common rate ; but
it can have i:o further effect.' — IV. p. 189.

Now upon this, " it is easy to see," that though competition
might not affect the fact of the results from the capital of
10,000/. being 12,000 yards of cloth, it is just the thing which
will affect their being worth 12,000/. and leaving a surplus of
1,000/. If competition should lower their marketable value to
12,000 pence, it is surmised the capitalist would be in a melan-
choly state. And it is precisely because men will not employ
capital for less than a certain rate of profit, — which may be
supposed the rate which will arise to the cloth manufacturer
from the 12,000 yards being worth 12,000/.,— that cloth will
be manufactured to the amount which will cause 12,000 yards
to be worth 12,000/., and to no greater. Here therefore being
a singular fallacy and mistake, it may be concluded that
Adam Smith was right when he maintained that profits were
lowered by the competition of capitalists and raised by its
absence ; the inferior limiting cause, or that which prevents
capitalists from offering competition beyond what will admit
of a certain rate of profits, being manifestly the opinion and
habits of society, which as they determine the final or average
proportion which shall be maintained between the numbers of
the labouring population and the funds for their support, or in
other words determine the average rate of Wages, so they also
determine the average rate of Profits of Stock, which are only
the wages of another description of labourers, consisting partly
of the recompense of present labour exerted in the form of
superintendence, and partly of the recompense of past labour
exerted in the creation of their capital^. It would in fact be no

* For further illustration of this, see the ♦'True Theory of Rent," Ninth

the " Wealth of Natiojis,"^

271

bad rule always to assume Adam Smith to be in the right, when
his opponents let fall anything about "the fundamental princi-
ple with respect to the decreasing productiveness of the capital
successively applied to the soil."

But, it will be said, if capitalists of all kinds, as for instance
coach-makers, upholsterers, and glass-makers, would agree to
increase their production at the same time and in the same
degree, would not this enable the cloth-maker to have as good
a coach, as many tables, and as much glass to set upon them,
in return for his yards of cloth as ever, without troubling his
head whether the money prices of these things continued the
same or not ? No ; there is a fallacy something like that of the
schoolboy w-ho fancies pebbles might go for halfpence if only
everybody would agree to take them. It is impossible that
production should be equably increased in all kinds, however
resolutely the capitalists were bent on the experiment ; and not
only would it not be increased equably, but in some most im-
portant articles, it v>^ould lag behind in a manner that would
be immediate ruin to the scheme. If, for instance, all the
manufacturers as above w^ere to take into their heads to try
to double their workshops and their workmen, they might pro-
ceed a little way in the pursuit, but where would they get double
the qua^itity of food f Capitalists might set up two work-
shops, and make two coaches instead of one ; but where would
they get two landed estates, and make two crops of corn
instead of one ? The land is not there to be had ; and if it is
urged that they may apply their capital to the bad and rejected
land, it is plain that this is only an indirect limit instead
of a direct one. It is the bird tied to a spiral spring ; which
though it may gain a little by pulling, is in reality as much tied
as another. The limit to the quantity of food, a limit always
existing even where not brought nearer by unjust laws, is
therefore what would bring the whole scheme to a halt. If this
limit can be extended, as for instance by getting access to the
food of foreign countries, or if the situation is supposed to be
one in which good land may be occupied at pleasure, — these
are precisely the circumstances in which increase of production
of all kinds may and will go on equably and without producing
a competition that will prevent the expected profits. But if
these circumstances do not exist, then the increase of produc-
tion in some kinds, will find a limit through the impossiblity
of a corresponding increase of production in some other kinds.
It is likely that other things besides food, might be found con-

Edition, p. IG and elsewhere. Sold by Effingham Wilson, 13, JBishopsgate
Street) price Threepence,

272

M'Gulloch's Edition of

tributing to bring on the check ; but food is the principal, and
therefore it is sufficient for the argument. Here then appears
to be the sore place, both of the theory which says '* the most
intense competition " could never produce a general fall of
profits, and of that which says variations in wages, profits, and
rent, cannot cause the value of commodities in the advanced
stages of society to vary. ,

In the Note on the Effect of Variations in the Rates of
Wages and Profits on the value of Commodities, all that is
connected v/ith allusions to the " fundamental principle " in the
form of the " capital last applied to the land," &c. may be cut off
as fallacious, except where the result accidentally accords with
the result of substituting the general principle of monopoly
price. For example, when it is said that the giving up of
rent by landlords would not enable raw produce to be obtained
at a reduced price," — this is true, not for any reason connected
with the portion of the necessary supply that is obtained by
the agency of the capital last applied to the land," but simply
because it could make no difference in the price of a limited
quantity of produce, whether it was sold for the benefit of one
set of men or of some other. And this reason would equally
hold good, if a situation should be discovered where, either
from ignorance or natural circumstances, there should be no
such thing known as different qualities of soil, or increase of
crops arising from laying out more money on the land. The in-
sisting, therefore, on adhering to what is a mere accident, and
representing it as the cause of the general result, — is like insist-
ing that the king's coach was made to move because the horses
were cream-coloured ; and though the main fact asserted,
namely that the coach has been drawn, may be undeniable, it
is plain that such a mode of accounting for it must lead to error
in the end.

On the Note on Money, it is apprehended, that though the
results laid down are true, the reasoning by which they are
supported does not go to the bottom of the question ; and that
a nearer approach to this is made in the place pointed out on
occasion of a previous allusion to the subject of money. The
part of the case which relates to^Banking, and particularly to
the question of the establishment of a National Bank, may
be considered as having been discussed in the Article on the
Renewal of the Bank Charter in the preceding Number of
this Review*.

The Note on " Corn Laws and Corn Trade " contahis exceed-
ingly valuable matter; and perhaps the only objection that can

* See page 200 of the present Volume.

the Wealth of Nations:'

273

be raised to any portion of it, — with the exception of some
allusions to that bane of political economists "the newly-em-
ployed capital," which however do not seem to affect the
results, — is to the part near the conclusion, where an ad valo-
rem duty of seven or eight per cent is spoken of as what the
agriculturists might possibly justly claim to indemnify them
for peculiar charges." There can be no policy in indemnify-
ing the agriculturists by a tax which deprives the public of
several times the amount given to the favoured class, when
there remains the incomparably cheaper plan of removing the
supposed burthens from the agriculturists and laying them on
somebody else. No man spends two shillings, as the means of
indemnifying his neighbour for a balance of one ; if his neigh-
bour's claim is just, he pays the shilling.

The Section (1.) on the Effect of granting a Bounty on the
Exportation of Corn, is peculiarly important. It is not certain
that the author was aware of the value of the inference inci-
dentally thrown out, that bounties on exportation," and

restrictions on the importation of corn,'' have results of pre-
cisely the same kind ; or of the high degree in which light is
thrown on the operation of the Corn Laws by his discussions on
a bounty.

' If the prices of corn in Britain and Spain were nearly on a level,
no exportation from the one to the other would take place. But if,
when prices were in this situation, a bounty, say of lOs. per quarter,
were granted by our government, corn would be immediately poured
from England into Spain. Limits would, it is true, be soon set to
this exportation and importation. The competition which takes place
among exporters, as among every other class of traders, prevents
their realizing more than the common and ordinary profits of stock ;
and hence grain would be exported from England to Spain, not in
the expectation of realizing the whole of the bounty as profit, but in
the view merely of securing the ordinary rate of profit on the capital
employed in its transfer. A rise of prices, though not to the whole
extent of the bomity, would therefore be immediately felt in this coun-
try, and a corresponding tall in Spain. "Nor would this rise and fall of
price be temporary. Corn would be permanently reduced [in price^
in Spain, [;«o/] because the unusual cheapness of the foreign supplies
would throw the poorest cultivated lands of that country out of tillage
[for the iejidency of throwing any land out of tillage^ so far as it goes,
IS to raise the price of corn and not to lower it ; but because the increased
quantity of corn arising fi^om the cheap foreign supply would bnng down
the price of corn upon the whole, and this reduction would throw a certain
quantity of poor land out of tillage, though to a much less amount than
would reduce the whole supply of corn to the former magnitude^ ; and
it would be permanently raised in England, [wo^] because the in-
creased demand would stimulate the bringing of poor lands under

VOL. II. S

274

M^Culloch's Edition of

cultivation [but for causes the opposite of those which operate in Spaing
A bounty, to the extent we have supposed, would perhaps depress
prices 5s. a quarter in Spain, and raise them as much in Britain. To
the Spaniards it would be extremely advantageous, as it would enable
them to purchase the most indispensable necessary of life at so much
less than they could otherwise have done ; in Britain, however, its
effects would be directly opposite. A few more of our heaths and
bogs would indeed be cultivated, but every class of persons in the
kingdom, landlords alone exce})ted, would find it more difficult to
procure food than before. The higher price of our corn, supposing it
not to raise wages and diminish the profits of stock, which it would
most unquestionably do, would obviously be of no advantage to the
public.'— IV. p. 334.

Here is presented a distinct vision of a rise of price in Eng-
land, accompanied with benefit to the landlords, and with the cul-
tivation of a few more heaths and bogs, which the landlords will
not fail to hold forth as a matter of national exultation ; but at
the same time attended with a removal of corn, to a much greater
amount than the produce of the said heaths and bogs, and an
increased difficulty of procuring food, to everybody except the
landlords. The sums the landlords gain, somebody else loses ;
and there is a loss to the community besides, of precisely the
quantity of production, business, and employment, which would
have been created by the expenditure of these sums in their
proper places. And the same processes may be traced point by
point in the case of a tax on importation. — -It will not fail to be
observed, that the insertions in italics are foreign to the author s
text ; and that the points therein controverted do not affect the
final argument.

The commentator's statement of the operation of the English
Corn Laws, is that the loss sustained by the public " may be
fairly and moderately estimated at from nineteen to tvxnty
millions" a-year, of which scarcely one-fifth " finds its way
into the pockets of the landlords'" after all; the rest being
" absolutely and totally lost to the country, without contributing
in the smallest degree to increase the comforts or enjoyments
of any individual whatever." There certainly has been no in-
stance in histor)^, where two-thirds of a population, not avow-
edly slaves and under physical restraint accordingly, have
submitted to such an infliction, to please the remaining third.
The process will be brief, and ought to be. Either the fund-
holders and the church will join with the commercial interests
and the rest of the public in putting down the enormity by
legislation ; or their possessions will be taken in the first in-
stance either by the operation of legislation or otherwise, and
afterwards will begin the attack on all property, hard enough

the " Wealth of Nations:'

275

upon the innocent, but the inevitable consequence of the pro-
digious provocation. The outrageous injustice of the landlords
is the key to the public danger, the spigot that confines the
fermenting contents of the national beer-barrel, which must
speedily burst if not relieved. If this were taken away, not all
at once but by a moderately rapid progression, the debt and
taxation would be made a flea-bite, not by removing them, but
by increasing the ability to bear them, which comes to the same
thing. The public irritation would fall, as the fierceness of a
den of hungry savages might be lulled by the application of
joints of meat ; and there would be a great calm. It seems
impossible that before the mischief goes much further, a go-
vernment should not arise, possessing about as much prudence
and decision as might be competent to the regulation of a regi-
mental hospital, and by speaking the truth and rallying the
parties concerned, cut off the progress of the evil by cutting off
its source. In which hope, the policy at present would seem
to be, to endeavour to accelerate the crisis ; as surgeons pro-
mote inflammation which is to terminate in cure.

The " Navigation Laws" were the restrictive fallacy applied
to shipping. To please the English ship-owners, the consumer
of a foreign commodity was to lose all the difference between
their inferior skill in their craft, and the skill of anybody else
who might be superior ; and some class of English traders
with whom the difference would have been spent, was to lose
the amount over again besides. They were an Act to enable
ship-owners to put twenty shillings into their own pocket by
taking forty from the community. It is grievous to think,
they should have been invented by republicans ; but it is some
consolation, that the dynasty of harlots which succeeded was
no wiser.

The only plea which in the present day could hold an hour
against the examination of reasonable men, is that which main-
tained they were for Defence, The representation was, that
the object was to increase the number of mercantile sailors,
and that the sailors were essential to the safety of the country.
The answer to this is, first, that a sailor, like everything else,
may be bought too dear ; and secondly, that the practice of
maldng the defence of the country habitually dependent on the
accumulation of merchant seamen at double their commercial
value, is as rude and inartificial, as it would be to enact that
every horse should have two drivers, for the purpose of securing
the power of increasing the corps of artillery-drivers with men
expert in the vocation. The folly may not be so glaring ; but
it is of the same kind. If the artillery were to propose such an
enactment, they would be told to train drivers for themselves,
s 2

276

M'Culloch's Edition of

But it is easier for an aristocratically governed navy, to kidnap
sailors than to make them ; and like other kidnappers, they
prefer that their game should he thick. Nothing but the con-
temptible inability of the English people to preserve themselves
from gross personal oppression on the part of the aristocracy,
could have continued the brutal practice of impressment. A
sailor, too, acts at a disadvantage compared with other men.
He is insulated by his vocation, and may be oppressed with
comparative safety ; while if the proposal were made to op-
press bricklayers' labourers, it would cause a general appeal to
the only substantial security a people has against an aristocracy,
resistance. The bricklayer has the advantage of being a
land-animal ; and the consequence is, that sailors are sub-
jected, not only to the privation of the personal freedom of which
their countrymen make their sneaking boast, but to an abiding
state of misgovernment in the ordinary pursuit of their vocation,
of which nobody that has not seen it can form a competent
idea. Now and then some tyrant who to ordinary wickedness
unites extraordinary folly, finds his way into the newspapers
in spite of all that can be done for his assistance ; and this is
nearly all the redress a sailor has.

The whole of the Note on " Impressment" may be taken as
a text-book by any person wishing to be master of the subject.
Its conclusion is particularly forcible and true. Unless means
are previously taken to remove the cause of complaint, the
sailors, if they are wise, will on the first breaking out of war,
go over to America in a body ; and it has been avowed that an
understanding to that effect has been extensively circulated
among them. The first principle of a free government, is that
oppression cancels all duties ; and it is the first principle, be-
cause to this alone the existence of any freedom upon earth is
traceable.

Of the Colonial System" the only remains, since the altera-
tions in the Navigation Laws, consist in the duties levied on
goods of the same kind as produced in the favoured colonies^
from foreign countries, and sometimes from dependencies of
the same country. Of the first kind is the tax on Norway
deals ; of the second is the degrading tax on sugar, imposed
for the abstract love of slavery felt by the gone-by government,
and the interest acknowledged in maintaining it for its reflex
effects on the community at home. A people that pays a poll-
tax for the support of slavery, is manifestly but a remove from
slavery itself; it is therefore nothing surprising, that a govern-
ment whose basis was the public wrong, should have supported
the outpost of slavery in the colonies at all hazards, for all
that is thus given to the slave-holders, it is clear the people of

the Wealth of Nations:'

277

England pay twice ; once in the loss to the consumers, and
once more in the loss to the traders on whom the difference in
a state of freedom would be spent. It is not a proposition to
be minced, but one to be brought forward wdth the gravity of a
theorem in Euclid, — that if the West Indies w^ere by a con-
vulsion of nature to sink into the sea, the commercial and
political advantages to the British community would be enor-
mous, m calculable ; and the gain in a moral and domestic
point of view, would be that of the cessation of a tribute, in
comparison of which any that was ever paid by a nation to a
conqueror, was honour and positive renown. No man has a
right to demand of another, that he shall degrade himself by
pretending ignorance, that if such a consummation should be
in the page of destiny, all the employment to trade, navigation,
or manufactures of any kind, which might thereby be caused
to cease, would be replaced by a greater extent of trade, navi-
gation, or manufactures, arising with the country whose cheaper
produce is now prohibited by the delegates of the slave-holders
in the House of Commons ; — with the single reservation, that
places should be lacking in the world from which the same sup-
ply could be procured. But this reservation can have no bear-
ing on the effects of removing from us the present slavery-tax
on sugar. Either such removal will cause the whole supply
of sugar to be increased, or it will not. If it does, there is an
end of the threat of an insufficient supply. If it does not, the
public will be where it is, and will be under the necessity of
giving the same prices for sugars of all kinds as at present;
and so the West-Indians will go on. The pretence, therefore,
that the public would lack a supply of sugar, is only for knaves
to frighten children with. The truth is, the government has
loved slavery and the support of slave-holders ; and for this
predilection of the government, we the slaves at second-hand,
must pay.

The Mote on the " Commercial Treaty with France in 1786,"
has the appearance of having been written some time since,
and having received the benefit of the author's later knowledge,
without all the expressions being removed which have the air
of running counter to it. Thus it talks of a " fair principle
of reciprocity," and " all really beneficial commercial transac-
tions being founded on a fair principle of reciprocity," as if
the author believed " reciprocity" had anything to do with the
common- sense of the affair. Yet nothing can be clearer than
the paragraph in which he puts down the foolish fallacy that
we should wait for reciprocity.

* The disinclination of foreign governments to enter into commer»

278

M^^Culloch's Edition of

cial treaties on a footing of reciprocity, has sometimes been urged as
a reason why we should not admit the commodities of their subjects
into our markets. But a regard to their own interest will always
induce those who consider the matter dispassionately to purchase
whatever commodities they want in the cheapest and best market.
It is true that the French government have, by an unwise and most
impolitic regulation, prevented the introduction of English cottons
and hardware into France ; and have thus forced their own subjects
to misemploy a large proportion of their capital, and to purchase
inferior articles at a higher price than that for which they might
otherwise obtain them. But this is a line of conduct that ought to
be carefully avoided, not followed. The fact that a foreign govern-
ment has done an injury to its subjects by making them pay an arti-
ficially enhanced price for their cottons and hardware, can be no
apology for the government of this country injuring those entitled to
its protection by making them pay an enhanced price for their wines,
brandies, and silks. To act thus, is not to retaliate on the French,
but on yourselves.' — IV. p. 417.

The " Petition of the Merchants of London for a Free
Trade" in 1820, is a consoling document ; particularly when
connected with the subsequent virtual abrogation of the Navi-
gation Laws. It is consoling because it gives a high idea of
what has been accomplished, and an earnest of the future.

On the subject of '* Commercial Revulsions," it is important
to notice, that by far the greater part of the pheenomenon arises
out of the system of protection. Men are supported in a trade
by making other men pay for what they do not want, and when
the wretched system fails, as fail it must, there is proclaimed
to be a Commercial Revulsion. If the system of protection
had never been, honest commerce would have taken its course
silently, and capital and employment would have been attracted
to one trade and drawn olf gradually from another, as the
changes in the world and human wants required. And another
point still more urgent in the actual condition of things, is the
insisting on the principle, that if any of the artificially cockered
interests give substantial evidence of suffering from physical
want, the evil should be met by a direct gift of money on the
part of the community, and not in a way which levies the sum
twice over, once from the consumers and once over again from
some other class of British traders with whom those consumers
would have spent the money. Every class which presents
itself with a demand for rehef through the medium of "pro-
tection,'' ought to be considered as saying, " Forasmuch as
nobody wants the goods we make, we beg that some other class
of traders may be robbed to serve^^us, and the consumers
over again besides."

The case of the " Herring Fishery'' is reducible to the same

the " Wealth of Nations*'

279

principle as other commercial frauds. To put an extra price
into the pockets of certain herring-fishers and the capitalists
who employ them, we take it twice over, first from the eaters
of herrings, and secondly from those traders with whom the
money would have been expended. The argument of ances-
torial wisdom is, that neither the eaters nor the traders form
a compact mass. The principle therefore is like one which
should allow the herring- fishers to raise a sum by coUectiug
half-pence on the highway, with the additional special condition
that half the halfpence should be thrown into the sea.

The Note on the " Disposal of Property by Will is too fa-
vourable to what it calls **the custom of primogeniture." It
omits the principal circumstance connected with its effects in
this country ; which is, that it makes part of a regularly or-
ganized system, for concentrating the wealth of the family in
the senior member, with the view of making it an engine in his
hands for effecting the maintenance of the junior branches
through the medium of the public wrong.

Of the " Government, Revenue, and Commerce of India''
as at present conducted, with its adjunct the China Trade, the
principal feature may be stated to be, that it is a commercial
fraud of the same nature as the Herring Fishery ; except
that the plunder instead of being collected from old women
who eat herrings, is collected from old women who drink tea,
and that the enjoyers sail in twelve-hundred-ton ships instead of
herring-busses, and go to India to fetch it. In both cases the
amount gained is taken twice over from somebody else ; once
from the old women, and once more from the people who would
have had their custom if it had not been laid out where it is.

In the Note on Taxes on the Rent of Land," the charge
against Adam Smith amounts to his having said that taxes on
Rent would fall on the landlords, without noting that such
taxes could not sweep away the portion of the rent of a farm
which consists of the interest of capital expended on improve-
ments or buildings. The answer to which appears to be, that
Adam Smith would have called one Rent, and the other the
Interest of Capital.

The Note on " Taxes on Profits" declares that Adam Smith
is wrong in saying such taxes fall ultimately on the consumers ;
and that this is only true when the tax is laid on the profits of
"one or a few businesses." A presumption of the inaccuracy
of this, is in the difficulty of assigning the point where "a few
businesses" are to merge into enough to produce the general
effect. The error may be suspected to lie in the reasoning
about the ''real value the truth apparently being, that when
a tax is imposed on the profits of any particular business or
species of capital, the parties concerned reduce the quantity of

280

Mcculloch's Edition of

their business or capital, till what is left pays them the ordinary
rale of profits as before. If any of them remove capital toother
employments, they will either not succeed in establishing it, or
drive out a corresponding quantity of the capital of less able
and fortunate dealers somewhere else. And the same process
will be repeated, if the tax be extended to all profits. The
final consequence of which will be, that in addition to the
tax being ultimately paid by the consumers, there will be a
reduction to the amount of the tax, of the commodities sold and
consumed within the country*.

From this results the very important proposition, that a tax
on manufactured goods, is analogous in impolicy to the attempt
at raising money for a favoured class by restrictions ; and for the
same reason, namely that there is a double incidence y or
the amount is lost twice over. The tax is paid once by the
consumers, and there is a gratuitous loss to an equal amount
on the capitalists and labourers besides ; this last gratuitous
loss being measured by, and in fact identical with, the losses
arising to the manufacturing capitalists and labourers from
the diminution of the extent of their business. This fact will
make a powerful demand on the public attention, whenever the
public has got through a few of the subjects whose pressure is
more immediate.

The Note on Taxes on Wages " is exposed to the same ob-
jections as that on Taxes on Profits. The cases of Wages and
of Profits are in fact the same ; profits being only the wages of
a particular kind of labour, and the absolute magnitude of both
being settled in the same way, by the opinion and habits of
society.

The Note on " Taxes on Raw Produce" exhibits a retreat-
ing from the Ricardo fallacy on Tithes. It in fact gives up
the general assertion " that tithes fall on the consumer," which
was precisely the point where the error of what was put forward
as the new theory of rent became distinctly ostensible by the
consequences ; and confines itself to contending that the oppo-
nents of that opinion have not assigned sufficient magnitude to
the loss which they maintained to fall on the consumer in con-
sequence of the existence of different qualities of soil.

The Note on " Taxes on Commodities" sets out with a clear
insight into the very point that was defective in the case of
taxes on profits, — namely, the certainty that the dealers in the
article taxed will be *' forced to contract their business, and by
lessening the supply, raise the price to such as will yield the
common and ordinary rate of profit." But it is followed by an

* For an extended examination of this, see "True Theory of Rent,** Ninth
Edition, p. 18.

the " Wealth of Nations:'

281

effort to confine this to the case of luxuries. What are luxuries ?
Salt is a luxury, to the man who is obliged to eat his potatoes
without. This part of the argument is in fact a portion of the
principles formerly contested in the cases of Taxes on Profit,
and on Wages. The truth with respect to taxes on commodi-
ties not produced under a monopoly, whether luxuries or not,
and whether the duty be laid ad valorem on all or in any other
manner, appears to be that the price is raised till the tax is paid
by the consumers, but there is at the same time a diminution
of the whole production, consumption, and employment of the
community, to the amount of the tax over again.

The researches on the " Funding System" point mainly to
the conclusion, that when all a nation's disposable income has
been absorbed by the interest of debt, the only chance left is to
outgrow the debt by removing checks upon the industry of the
community, if it is lucky enough to have any. Of luck of this
description, our own has no deficiency.

The "Additional Note on Rent" is amusing by the bonhommie
of the assertion, extracted from a writer of as early date as
1801, that ** Rent is, in fact^ nothing else than a simple and
ingenious contrivance, for equalizing the profits to be drawn
! from fields of different degrees of fertility." Nevertheless the
same writer's ideas are not far from the truth on the nature of
effective demand, and its connexion with the price. It is not
exactly that men say ** We must and will have such a quan-
tity of corn whatever we may pay for it.'' But they raise the
price which they will bid for corn, and at the same time econo-
mize its use in all the ways they can discover, till at last they
agree upon a division which will make the existing supply hold
out ; the increase of price encourages increase of supply in
future, and by the repetition of the process and its opposite, the
price and the supply are made continually to meet. With the
exception, however, of the odd imagination alluded to, the
extract is far from being a bad account of the origin of Rent.

It is very clear on the whole, that the commentator has got
at least half-way out of the Ricardo fallacy on Rent ; but he is
loth to acknowledge the fact, and tries all turns to persuade the
reader that he was never so far wrong as might be thought.
He would do better to apply his influence and his talents, to
display the full extent of the mistake. Another request which
may reasonably be urged, is, that after having let down the ques-
tion of Absenteeism by advancing a demonstration before par-
liament which burst in the proof, he would either support what
others have produced in the way of a probes aliter on the same
point, or put forward something better of his own.

282

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

AiiT. IV. — The Music of Nature ; or, An Attempt to prove that what is
passionate and pleasing in the Art of Singing, Speaking^ and Per-
forming upon Musical Instruments^ is derived from the Sounds of
the Animated World, With curious and interesting I I lust rations.
By William Gardiner. — London ; Longman. Leicester; Combe
and Son, Cockshaw. 1832. 8vo. pp. 530.

nPHIS is the common-place book of an amateur who rejoices
in the recollection of having played a violin at the Comme-
moration of Handel in 1784. In a musical sense it is de omni
scibili, cum quibusdam aliis ; and the intention here is to go
through it in the same disorderly order as it is written, for the
chance of making any remarks that may tend to promote " the
greatest happiness" in the department of sweet sounds.
And first,

There is a marked distinction between noise and musical sound,' —
p. 12.

What the origin of the difference may be, it is useful to try to as-
certain. The author has probably aimed at the right place, in
saying that noise is a confused mixture of sounds though that
it is produced by the " concussion of non-elastic bodies," may re-
quire to be explained away. It is difficult to understand how
any sound can be produced from non- elastic bodies. Musical
sound is manifestly the result of equable vibrations ; and in pro-
portion as these vibrations are unmixed, is the clearness of the
tone. A certain degree of prolongation is also necessary to musi-
cal effect ; for if the sound is rapidly put an end to, the conscious-
ness of its musical tone is at all events greatly diminished.
Hence the probability is that unmusical sound arises princi-
pally from two causes, speedy cessation producing the effect of
abruptness, and mixture. If all the keys of a pianoforte are
struck at once, something is produced very much like a crash ;
and if the notes were increased in number and diminished in
interval, and moreover the whole made abruptly to cease, it
is probable that any degree of approximation to the most un-
musical sound in existence, might be attained that could
reasonably be desired. The use of all which, if it be true, is to
estabhsh the simplicity of nature, and pall down anything hke
blind astonishment at the existence of musical sounds.

Nevertheless the circumstances which affect the quality of
musical sound, are often such as it is difficult to account for.
The following observations will be interesting to the utilitarians
in violins.

< The violins made at Cremona about the year 1660 are superior in
tone to any of a later date, age^ seeming to dispossess them of their

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283

noisy qualities, and leaving nothing but the pure tone. If a modern
violin is played by the side of one of these instruments, it will appear
much the loudest of the two, but on receding 100 paces, when com-
pared with the Jmati, it will be scarcely heard.'

* When Barthelemon led the Opera, connoisseurs would go into the
gallery to hear the effect of his Cremona violin, which at this dis«
tance predominated greatly above all the other instruments ; though
in the orchestra it was not perceptibly louder than any of the rest.' —
p. 12.

^ The violin had its origin in Italy, about the year 1600 ; but those
which are esteemed of the greatest value were made at a later period,
about 1650, at Cremona, by the family of A. and J. Amati, and their
contemporary Stradvarius, of the same place. These instruments are
found to be very much superior to any that have been made since that
time, which acknowledged excellence is chiefly attributed to their age.
The Amati is rather smaller in size than the violins of the present day,
and is easily recognized by its peculiar sweetness of tone. The Stra-
divari is larger and louder; and is so highly esteemed, that many have
been sold for the sura of two hundred guineas.' — p,205.

Since tone is so highly paid for, it is strange that greater
efforts have not been made for its improvement. A guitar that
was fitted with a tail-piece in the manner of a violin, had its
I tone entirely ruined ; which may be supposed attributable to
the weight and volume of the incumbrance. When the strings
were fastened to pegs at the back of the instrument, the strength
of tone was greatly increased* ; but there arose the inconve-
nience, that in consequence of the elasticity of the parts behind
the bridge, the strings were never steady in tune. Possibly on
the violin the advantage might be obtained without the evil, by
fastening each string to a piece of hardened steel wire which
should reach from the back of the instrument to near the bridge.
Col. Macdonald, in his treatise cited in a former Articlef , has
suggested the removal of the tail-piece, but has not noticed the
evil which ensued.

It is remarkable that the following observations on the lan-
guage of the modern Greeks, should make their appearance
via America and a book on music.

* Mr. Pinkerton, in an essay on this s abject, in the Memoirs of the
American Academy, observes, that he had formerly adopted the very
prevalent opinion, that the pronunciation of the modern Greeks was
grossly corrupt ; but that in the investigation of the subject, which he

* It was observable that the tone was further improved by putting a piece of
leather between the strings and the edge of the back on which they pressed.
This probably acted by checking some vibration in the strings behind the
bridge ; as may be concluded to be the object of the strip of cloth interlaced
among the strings, behind the bridge, in pianofortes.

+ Article Enharmonic of the Ancients. See page 133 of the present Volume,
Note f.

284

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

was led to make in consequence of conversations with individuals
of the nation, he had found strong reasons for changing his opinion.
He now thinks it in the highest degree probable, that the Greeks of
the present day pronounce very nearly as their ancestors did, as early
as the commencement of the Christian era.' — North American Review,
No. LVII.— Music of Nature, p. 36.

How far ** the true principles of musical taste and expres-
sion" depend on imitation, is a question which, as the author
has admitted in his Preface, *' may excite much controversy."
The inference from a general view perhaps is, that it is par-
tially true, and only partially ; and that it is not in zeal for imi-
tation, that the actual music is deficient. Few people have
listened to much music, without being invited to the exercise
of laughter, by the matter-of-fact manner in which musicians
apply themselves, now to hum as flies, anon to murmur as
waters, and afterwards to whisper as the evening breeze. And
equally few have failed to come to the conclusion, that these
were coarse and inelFicient efforts, — rude practical attempts at
effect, like his who brought seven fatherless children on the
stage by way of forming the pathetic ; — and that music is in
reality something more subtle, or at all events less mechanical
than this. The " Battle of Prague" is imitative ; but the
" Battle of Prague" is not of a high order of music. The earliest
impressions made on children by music, are probably in a great
proportion of cases received either from the warbling of nurses,
or the services of the cathedral or conventicle ; and it may fairly
be asserted that the effect is not produced because what is heard
is like anything in heaven or earth. That in after life there is
some connexion between the sounds of music and the tones in
which human beings, and perhaps other animals, express cer-
tain feelings, is also not to be denied ; there is some community
of source. But the community after all is only remote ; and
there is more danger of making too much of it, than too little.
If a Swiss soldier is moved to a rapture of desertion by an imi-
tation of a cow-horn, it is not because it is music, but because
it is like a cow^-horn. A miller recruit might be roused to the
same feeling by the imitation of a mill-clack. All attempts at
improving music by the gross imitation of material objects,
have been failures; from the piping nightingale of the stage, to
the idea of Napoleon's band-master of a discharge of cannon
for a military fortissimo. The efforts of practical musicians to
obtain effect by accumulation of noise, have been equally un-
successful. It is probable that the elderly gentlemen who fell
into fits at the Commemoration of Handel, would have done the
same on a saluting-day at Spithead. Music is not noise but

concord of sweet sounds." If anybody insists on prying into

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285

the materials out of which the result is made, it may be proved
that as a living Venus is made up of certain proportions of skin
and bone and muscle, so musical effect is dependent on certain
proportions between the velocities with which different sub-
stances vibrate. Why the combinations or sequences of certain
sounds should excite particular emotions in the hearer, is a
question of the same kind as why certain arrangements of Hps
and eyes should produce beauty. It is much easier to ascertain
the fact, than the immediate cause. But in neither case does
the effect seem to depend mainly, if at all, on imitation. There
may possibly be instances in which a reference to early associ-
ations in a certain degree affects the decision : but no reason is
shown for believing that this is either the whole, or an import-
ant fraction, of the cause.

The human voice is undoubtedly the most perfect of musical
instruments; not ere/?/ because it can imitate the tones of
ordinary life, though this may go for something, — but because
a good specimen of the human voice combines more varieties
of power than any other instrument, aided by the fact that
there is much more immediate and delicate connexion with the
will of the performer, than can be achieved in any modification
of wood, or wire, or reed, or catgut. The ostensible difference
between singing and speaking, is, that the first proceeds by the
intervals produced by dividing a string in the simple ratios, and
the other does not. The grace called a Slide or 'portamento
introduces an occasional approximation to what takes place in
speaking, and speakers do undoubtedly frequently rest upon
musical intervals ; but neither of these seems to destroy the
main fact, that we may have all our lives discoursed in porta-
mento and sung in intervals.

It is not to be doubted, that there have been good vocal per-
formers. But there is nothing incredible in the surmise, that
posterity may look back on the present time, in something the
same manner that the present looks back on the stage as it
stood before Garrick's reformation. It is difficult, if not im-
possible, to imagine anything more powerful than Mrs. Sid-
dons's representation of Lady Macbeth. It is very easy to
imagine something more powerful than Madame Pasta's exe-
cution of Deh ! caima, O del, though the composer has contri-
buted all the materials for scenic effect. It may be heresy,
but ail the good in the w orld comes by heresy ; — there will be
a new style, which shall give to serious singing, exactly what
constituted the difference between the tragedy of Siddons or of
Talma, and the tragedy which occupied the place before tiiose
suns had risen. Trills too, and bravuras, will be shelfed with
Mandane's hoop and Alexander's wig; the coming age will as

286

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lief see a performer try how long he can hold his head in a pail
of water, as either.

There appears room for profitable inquiry, on the subject of
" Accent." One of the writers on music in the Encyclopaedias,
in general individuals of eminence in their art, has fallen into
the error of speaking slightingly of the performers on that
ancient and stirring instrument the drum, for talking of per-
forming *' sonatas" on what in the commendable pride of their
hearts some of the fraternity have termed their parchment
fiddle." Now the fact was a thing to be thankful for, and not
to mock at; for what the drummers had done, was to exert
themselves to display the powers of a particular iDranch of mu-
sical expression, and demonstrate them stripped of connexion
with the rest, in the same manner as anatomical plates exhibit
the muscles by sets, till they arrive at the skeleton which is the
sustainer of the whole. Instead of mocking, a musical philo-
sopher should have caught at the opportunity to authenticate
the degree in which accent unassisted by either melody or har-
mony can be the source of musical efiects ; with a view to as-
certain and improve its application in aid of the others. And
the tendency of such an inquiry would be to prove, that Music
may claim Accent as the instrument of at least quinta pars
sui nectaris, and that light may be thrown on the anatomy of
its construction.

And here there may be a dispute in the outset, on the appli-
cation of terms. What is the precise term for the quality by
which a drummer, — and more markedly still, a native beating
** many a winding bout" in the stillness of an African night
though his machinery be only a board and two sticks, — excites
the idea of measure and of music ? It is not merely the suc-
cession of sounds at particular intervals ; a principal part of the
effect arises from the cunning increasing or diminishing of the
strength of sounds in particular places of the general rhythm.
To this it is that the term " variety of accent" seems to be pro-
perly applied ; and as words have generally one or two second-
ary meanings slightly removed from the primary, so Accent is
sometimes used to denote the whole system of what is more
rigidly expressed by variety of accent," and sometimes for
those particular portions of the system to which the loudest
sound is given, or on which in the language of the author a
" stress or force is put."

' In the following strain, the character and meaning of the music
will entirely depend upon which note the stress or accent falls [on].
By being placed upon the first of every four, the movement is thrown
into common time ; but when placed upon the ^first of every three,
into triple ; although the notes are precisely the same. [Here follow

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287

two lines of notes, which, through mistake it must be supposed, are
not the same]. The ear takes no pleasure in listening to a succession
of unaccented or monotonous sounds: so far from stimulating its
attention, it tires and grows weary with the uniformity. From the
peculiar structure of the ear, we learn that the different degrees of
loud and soft constitute one of its greatest pleasures, and that it is
unfitted to receive two sounds of equal force in succession. would
probably have been better to say, that two such sounds, in ordinary cir-
cumstances, produce no pleasing effect.'] An accented sound invariably
robs the following one of its energy ; and this is natural, — for after
the weight of voice has been thrown upon the accented note, the fol-
lowing is uttered under a degree of exhaustion, and consequently is
rendered weaker. [Something better might have been said than this.,
The note which has less force is as important and meritorious a member
as that which has more.] When the accent is removed from the first
note of the bar to the second or fourth, it is called a false accent. This,
by disturbing the rhythm, imparts a peculiar movement to the strain,
upon which depend its leading features and character, as instanced in
national airs, the polonaise, and the waltz, &c. Haydn, by this means,
will convert a few bars of triple time into common, in the middle of a
movement, with a capricious effect.'

* It has been observed that the walking pace of a man is in com-
mon time, and that armies are always moved in this measure. ^Nature
decreed, it when she made man's two legs of the same length, A cripple
moves in | time.] But in Venice, where the people are constantly
moving upon the water, the motion of the boat [or rather, the sound
of the oars, which say distinctly One — Two — Three — " with a diffc
rent tone and accent upon each,] suggests the flowing ease of triple
time, in which all their celebrated airs and barcarolles are written.
Rousseau informs us, that these airs are composed and sung by the
gondoliers, and have so much melody and an accent so pleasing, that
there is no musician in Italy but piques himself on knowing and sing-
ing them. The liberty that the gondoliers have of visiting all the
theatres gratis, gives them an opportunity of forming an ear to all the
niceties of music and a correct taste.' — p. 184.

As the preservation of measure or time is one great source
of musical pleasure, so the undulation of sounds in different
degrees of strength, especially when also connected with mea-
sure, is found to be another. The undulation of sounds in
musical time is an improvement and enhancement of the pleasure
received from musical time simpliciter ; the last is the outline,
and the other the portrait filled up.

The most palpable distinctions of time are into even and
triple ; or those where the bar or marked division of the mea-
sure is divisible into two members, and into three. It is not
impossible to imagine music composed of five, or seven, notes
of equal length in the bar ; and it is believed that some such
has been written, at least of the first kind. On experiment it

288

Gardiner's Music of Nature,

is not difficult to form notes in such a metre into something
like a wild waltz ; and by joining several of the notes into one,
an effect is produced which is not unfamiliar in the practice of
the trumpet and bugle. But the great reason why metres
of this kind are not used, is probably because they produce no
very marked result, or none that is not as well produced by
employing the multiples of two or of three. All the multiples
of either of these, by itself or by the other, may be said to be
in use ; though they are considered, not perhaps with perfect
accuracy, as all included in the two classes of even and triple
time.

The first remark that may be made on these species of time,
is that in even time each bar, however multitudinous the notes
that may be inserted in it, is divisible into two portions of very
distinguishable degrees of force or loudness, and in triple time
into three. It may be a question whether the divisions may
not be more ; but in the first place they certainly are these. In
common time the first and last portions of the bar have the re-
spective characters which it is common to describe by the titles
of masculine and feminine, as indicative the one of strength
and the other of grace ; and thus the two halves proceed

Like those sweet birds that fly together,
Link'd by a hook and eye."

The beginning of the first half is marked by a peculiar degree
of what is often exclusively called the *' accent ;" and there
probably is, or ought to be, an almost imperceptibly small de-
gree of the same on the beginning of the second. In triple
time, the bar is divisible with equal distinctness into three
portions, each falling below the other in loudness ; so that if
a stranger should be introduced suddenly into hearing of the
sounds, there would be no possibility of his mistaking the be-
ginning of the bar. One consequence of this is^ that the triple
time is more susceptible of variety than the other; and its
superiority in this respect will, it is apprehended, by most
hearers be recognized.

But this is only the outline, and the inquiry may be pushed
much further in several directions. Whoever has been rocked
in a boat upon what in plain prose may be called the " ocean
waves," will have been conscious that besides the petty furrows
which lifted its head and stern alternately in a time approach-
ing to the vibrations of a church pendulum, there was a larger
swell of which the others were but inconsiderable parts, and
even a mightier still, of which this second was but a limb and
portion. Something like this appears to be the nature of the
undulations of musical notes ; there is a great swell and a little

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

289

one, and both of them contribute to the general effect. The
examination may therefore on this principle be conducted in
two directions ; first, to inquire what quantity of minor undu-
lations may be within the compass of a bar,— and secondly, to
ask whether bars themselves may not be fractions of greater
undulations, and whether out of these again may not be consti-
tuted undulations of higher orders in succession, to an extent
that can only be measured by the skill of the performer, and
probably also by the cultivated sensitiveness of the hearer. Any
person who will attend critically to the execution of superior in-
strumental performers, will be surprised to find to what an ex-
tent this species of '* linked sweetness" may be traced, and
how large a number of bars may be formed into a connected
whole, by means of the relations of what is here termed accent.
A desire to direct effects of this kind by signs, was evidently
the origin of the multitudinous fortes and pianos which present
themselves in some old music.

As one of the most reasonable steps towards the attainment
of execution is to know the rationale of the effect aimed at, it
can hardly be denied that investigations of this nature tend to
improvement. At the same time there are always two factions
in every art; one which cultivates mystery under the pretence
of genius, and the other which resolves mystery into its com-
ponent parts when able, and trusts to genius for what may re-
sist solution after all.

As is noted by the author of the work, there are sometimes
false accents, employed for the purpose of imparting a peculiar
effect. And there are occasionally passages in which all the
notes are brought nearly to an equality in point of accent, pro-
ducing a result akin to something that may be recognized in
trumpet blasts, with a portion of the expression aimed at by
the term maestoso. Cadences also, which as noted in p. 184
are used to make a break or separation for the purpose of intro-
ducing a change of subject, frequently affect a nullity of accent,
producing a musical-snuff-box-like effect, highly favourable for
leaving the ear unoccupied for any measure which may follow.
But all these may be considered as exceptions, and form no
objection to the other being the rule.

Attention to such principles of accent, may solve what would
otherwise present themselves as musical difhculties. For ex-
ample, very lame answers are to be found in some works of re-
pute, to the question of what would be the difference betw^een
the same music played in what is called Common time of four
crotchets in a bar, and in what is marked %. In which the con-
sequence would evidently be, that by the last mode of division
the number of leading accents would be doubled ; a circum-

VOL. II. T

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stance either the introduction or omission of which may by pos-
sibiUty have serious effects upon the character of the perform-
ance. Again, if it is asked what is the difference between the
times marked |, and J ; — the first is an even time as regards
the divisions of the whole bar, but the subdivisions of these are
into triple ; while in the last the converse is the case. And
this may solve a difficulty often felt by beginners, who when
they find six quavers joined by one line at top or bottom in a
bar, are at a loss whether they should be accented by threes
together, or by twos : of which the solution seems to be, that
if the music is written in | time they should be accented by
threes, and if in J by twos. Waltzes, for example, are almost
always in f cime, and jigs in | ; and it does not require much
acumen, to be sensible of the difference of character between a
waltz and a jig. A further question might be raised, of whether
it is not possible for an air, for instance, in Common time (or
four crotchets, which is the commonest of the even), to have
the undulations made by its successive bars, in triple time ; or
contrarywise, bars in triple time to have their undulations
among each other in even. The instance of f time, where, as
formerly noted, the bar is divisible into two, but these divisions
again into three, appears to present an analogy on this point.
These however are speculations showing rather what might
possibly be reduced to system, than what anybody has done ;
though it is not unlikely that superior performers take the
benefit of the facts without knowing it.

Attempts of this kind at analysing musical effects may be
considered trifling, or may be voted mechanical by such as de-
sire to believe every grace *' beyond the reach of art ;" but they
are advanced here with more (confidence, from the certainty
that a quasi pupil on whom they were experim.ented, made
rapid advances in a branch of musical expression which is ge-
nerally the result of long practice, and is often considered as
the gift of nature rather than of instruction. There is no rea-
son for being afraid there shall not be everywhere enough left
for nature after all ; but it is good to compass a point by in-
struction where it can be done.

The concluding paragraph of the author's Section on Accent,
is faulty inasmuch as the subject of it is manifestly not accent,
but tone or quality of sound.

The Section on " Colour ' is puzzling. He that can receive
it, let him receive it. It is clearly possible for a musician to
associate the ideas of particular kinds of tone or quality of sound,
with particular colours, and to communicate these associations
to others. And further, it is not impossible, that these associ-
ations when they become common stock, may be conveniently

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

291

employed to express the presence or absence of certain of the
quaUties in question. For example, if it be determined to call
the Trombone deep red, and the Oboe yellow, there is no
difficulty in conceiving that the Clarionet may be described as
orange, or the Bassoon, which is a gruff oboe, as deep yellow.
It may perhaps be more natural to call the Flute sky-blue,
than the Double Bass ; but there is still something visionary in
the comparison. There may be a gentle colour and a gentle
sound ; but after all, the resemblance is like the river at Mon-
mouth and river in Macedon, which had " salmons in both."
A lady who read this Section, declared that in childhood she
always strongly attached the idea of colour to names, and could
never think of Anne but as pink, Elizabeth purple, and Lucy
light blue. Charles she thought was red, Thomas blue, William
yellowish green, Edward brown, Francis the colour of red hair,
and Peter pepper-and-salt. Associations of this nature appear
to be characteristic of tender age, and maybe held to be of the
kind which it is rather the office of philosophy to dissolve than
to impress.

The illustration taken from the Sinfonia in the " Creation^* (p.
191) is resolvable into other elements than colour. There is as
strong an analogy as can well exist among things not absolutely
homogeneous, between a succession of sounds beginning with
the scarcely discernible, and receiving gradual accessions till they
arrive at the greatest fullness of which they are capable, — and
the self- same process, mutatis mutandis, transferred to rays of
light. It is certain that the sun has risen nightly at Covent
Garden for many years, to a symphony where this analogy is
distinctly preceptible. It is not known with clearness whether
it is the precise Sinfonia mentioned above ; but it is rather
believed it is.

Where did Madame De Stael get her information, that cro-
codiles imitate the cry of children so perfectly, as to allure and
entrap their mothers ? Stories of crocodiles are from Egypt;
and the Egyptian crocodile entraps nobody. The French army
were in the water every day, and there was no instance of a
soldier being molested by a crocodile. Possibly the other was
before the march of intellect reached crocodiles ; which in our days
has made " dogs in this country bark more and fight less than
formerly" (p. 199). It is certain dogs are a reformed gene-
ration ; but it may be doubted whether it has not been prin-
cipally brought about, by sending the recusants a la lanterne.

The author is perhaps the first musical writer, who has re-
marked the horrible notes of the mule. They undeniably are
sufficient warrant for the Levitical prohibition. He begins with
an attempt to bray, like the father that begat him ; when all
T 2

292

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

his mother rises in his throat, and he dwindles into as awful a
caricature of neighing, as Frankenstein's man was of humanity.
The two parents seem to divide his larynx, with most unfortu-
nate precision.

The Note on the Violin in p. 205 falls into an error on the
subject of the Guitar.

' The frets upon a viol were narrow ridges of wood, just raised above
the finger-board, crossing it at right angles, and were so placed, that
the finger casually falling between the frets, the string was stopped
in tune. In the guitar they still remain as a guide to ignorance, and an
impediment to taste and exp^^essionJ

Now the fact is, that the guitar being intended for the most
part to play a trio and often a sextett, the frets are essential
to the execution of these purposes. The way to settle the
question, would be to try how much could be executed on a
guitar without frets. The objection therefore seems as untena-
ble, as to blame an organist for having his pipes of fixed sounds,
instead of tuning each as he goes, by the action of his hands, in
the manner of the tube of a sacbut. But as the guitar was the
oldest instrument, its frets were naturally enough in the first
instance transferred to the viol and its kindred ; though the
necessity for them was not the same, inasmuch as all idea of
sounding more than at the utmost two notes at once, was given
up by the introduction of the bow.

It is rather hard that after commemorating everything that
squeaks, or squalls, or hums through the nose, no other mention
should have been made of the descendant of the cithara of the
ancients, the lute of our well-favoured ancestresses. A murrain
on the man who hath no leaning towards gentle antiquity ! If
instruments were estimated by their eff"ect divided by their
magnitude, the guitar with its hundred tones would hold consi-
derable rank. But musicians love to come forth, and call upon
their gods ; and think scorn to commune with an instrument
that brings an orchestra to every man's hearth for about the
cost of an alderman's dinner. It is true its scale is not abso-
lutely the purest ; for it is that division of the octave into
twelve equal intervals, which was the subject of great expecta-
tion with musicians while it was thought difficult and rare*.

* The way in which the guitar-maker divides the scale of an instrument
whatever be the size, is of extreme simplicity. He uses what he calls a compass
of division ; being a pair of compasses of wood, but with the leg* prolonged on
the other side of the pivot, as would be done to make a pair of pincers ; and
the four points are tipped with iron. The two short legs are each an inch long,
and the others (to the nearest sixteenth) seventeen inches and thirteen-six-
teenths ; (the true proportion, to five places of decimals, being that of 17"81718
to P. He takes the distance from the nut to the bridge, in the long legs of his
compasses, and then with the short legs marks olf from the nut the place of the
first fret; he takes the distance from this fret to the bridge, in the long legs as

Gardiner's Music of Nature,

293

But this is of small import in an age which finds beauties in
untuneableness, and believes exact intonation would be an evil
and a loss. Its intonation is in some keys inferior to the
pianoforte's ; but the pianoforte cannot warble, or articulate, or
sigh, or wail, or tremble like the human voice under emotion,
as the guitar ; it cannot effect that oblivion of worldly ills,
which a philosopher said was produced on him by a moonlight
night, and Lord by Vestris' ancle. It may be as-
sumed that in every instrument, the power of expression will
be in proportion to the immediateness of the contact between
the sounding materials and the performer. Hence of all wind
instruments the bagpipe is the least sentimental ; and strings
are fully conscious of the difference, between being touched by
a maiden's fingers, and by the intervention of a stick. None
but the lute can have the vox humana tones, — the distinct
soprano, mezzo, contr*alto, and tenor voices, — which reside
about the middle of the thinner strings, and the miniature
Dragonetti that lurks within the thickest, interchangeable at
will with the cumbrous alacrity of the bassoon. The forte of the
lute kind is imitation, — not of beasts or birds or things material,
but of musical expressions ; — the conjuring up of all recollec-
tions that hang by sounds, from a simple melody, to the trium-
phant *' Orquesta" of the Spanish cadet that forsook Ferdi-
nand and a lieutenancy for love — of his guitar. Of all dulcet
sounds none can surpass a duett of Huerta's on the middle of
the second and third strings, emerging from a wilderness of
notes, deficient indeed in noise, but giving the liveliest idea in
miniature of an overture by a full band*. It is Lord Byron's

before, and with the short ones marks the distance from the first fret to the
second ; and so on. On being asked how he secured the exact proportion of the
legs, he said he rubbed the iron points upon a stone, till the compasses, uSed
as above, came exactly to the middle of a string at twelve leaps.

* The lines presented to the guitarrista by Madame Emile Girardin, better
known in England as Mademoiselle Delphine Gay, will be recognized as drawn
from the living subject.

L'avez-vous entendu ce troubadour d'Espagne

Qu'un art melodieux aux combats accompagne ?

Sur la guitarre il ehante et soupire a la fois ;

Ses doigts ont un accent, ses cordes une voix.

Son chant est un poeme Iiarmonieux sans rime.

Tout ce qu'on eprouve, ce qn'on reve il Texprime.

Les cosurs a ses accords se sentent rajeunir;

La beaute qui I'ecoute, heureuse en souvenir,

S'emeut, sourit et pleure, et croit encore entendre

Ce qu'on lui dit jamais de plus doux, de plus tendre.

Sa guitarre, en vibrant, vous parle tour-a-tour

Le langage d'esprit, le langage d'aroour ;

Chacun y reconnait I'instrument qui I'inspire ;

Pour le compositeur c'est un orchestre entier ;

C'est le tambour leger pour le Basque en delire;
C'est le clairon pour le guerrier,
Pour le poete c'est la lyre f

294

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

imaoe for sweet things, — the voice of girls." Or the same
frail machine can produce a retraite, that would draw two
souls out of one adjutant, — an old soldier may positively see
the little drum-boy straddle, or stir his barrack fire and think
upon the dew-drop pendant at the bugler's nose: — varied on
the harmonics with a ran plan plan worthy of him w^ho at
midnight musters the spectre Garde," with the palpable
liavour of parchment as it would come from his marrowless
knuckles across the ghastly heath. And then can come pipes,
and reeds, and oaten stops, and distant choirs, priests chanting
merrily, or mass, or requiem, and poor lost Italy, — curse on
all traitors ^vA justes milieus of the earth, — and fair romantic
Spain, and floating forms, and dark mantillas, and castanets
that turn the air to rhythm. All these cannot be had from a
spinet. But they require some husbandry, — a parlour twilight,
or a turret lone, when gabbling boys are fast abed ; and there
is one peculiar tone, whatever be the cause, is never brought
out but in the small hours of the morning. Above all, these
things are hid from simpletons who seek them in a crowded
theatre and then declare they nothing heard. They might as
well line the stage with miniatures, and view them from the
upper boxes. But he has missed the strangest effect of music,
who has not heard the " Carnival of Venice " in the long
gallery that leads dov/n to the tombs of the Pharaohs. Organs
would have been pompous mockeries ; but the small voice
of the guitar said *' All tlesh is grass," in a way there was
no resisting. It was as if the domus exilis Plutonia was piping
the joys and cares, that four thousand years have swept into
eternity. Nothing ever j^ave a man such a vehement desire to
cry;— not even the little duck-tails of Signer Passalacqua's
nankin jacket could break the charm. It is hard the author
could tell no story of the guitar. Did he never hear of th^
Portuguese army— would it were Miguel's — that Hed and left
eleven thousand guitars upon the field? Or of the surprise of
quarters in the Succession war in Spain, — where the foremost
cavalier found the enemy's vedette tuning his guitar as he sat
on horseback, and perceiving he did it ill, took it from his hands
and returned it saying Ahora es templadd^, and passed on.
There must be some inward grace, where there are so many
outward signs. Men have not so forgotten themselves in peace
and war, without there being something that twined about their
souls, in a way that kists full o' whistles" or of hammers have
not surpassed.

A description of the first impressions from Paganini's per-

* * Now it is in tune.''

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

295

formance on the violin (p. 218), has heen very extensively
quoted for its liveliness and force ; though it is not quite clear
whether the author means to deliver it as his own. But on one
point (peace be with the descriher) it will at some period give a
strange idea of the state of theoretic knowledge in this country.
It says of Paganini's performance, *' The highest notes (contrary
to every thing we have learnt) are produced as the hand recedes
from the bridge, overturning all our previous notions of the
art." Posterity will smile to think, that in almost the middle
of the J 9th century, the simplest phsenomenon of the harmonic
sounds should have excited the same surprise as a magic lan-
tern, a magnetic swan, or a phosphorus-box, might have done
in the dark ages ; — a pbirnomenon too, practically familiar to
every foreign peasant that tinkles a guitar*. Truly our dilet-
tanti pay tithe of anise and cummin, and omit the weightier
matters of the law.

* There can be no reasonable doubt that the allusion in the description is to
the harmonic noie% ; in which Paganini (the difficulty of his execution is another
question) has that theoretic knowledge, which maybe communicated to any
intellio^ent child in a quarter of an hour. A string touched lightly with the
finger in a peculiar manner at the distance of any aliquot part from the l)ridge,—
that is to say, at the half, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, &c. and so on
without definite limit, — produces the sound which the string would produce if
stopped at the same point in the usual way. And what is more, it equally pro-
duces the same sound if touched at any other of the points of division into the
aliquot parts, — saving always those which merge into some simpler division, as
for instance two-sixths which can only be the same as one-third, three-sixths as
one-half, &c. Hence in all cases, the sound made by touching at the aliquot
part nearest the head, must be the same as at the aliquot part nearest the bridge ;
and consequently it must increase in shrillness as this aliquot part is smaller
or approaches to the head. The whole of which is of every day familiarity to
players on the guitar.

If the cause of this phaenomenon be demanded, it may probably be found in
the fact, that the kind of touch employed does not check all motion above it as
when a string is pressed down to the neck in the common way, but allows the
agitation to be communicated to the upper part ; yet at the same time prevents
any vibrations from being permanently kept up, except such as are formed by
the string's dividing itseff into the aliquot parts, the points of division being
kept at rest (for only so the thing is possible) by the movements of the string
on the two sides of each, being in opposite directions at the same instant of
time. That the points of division all remain at rest, is palpable from the experi-
ment of placing any small body on them, which will not be thrown off. For
further matter on the harmonic sounds, see the Article on the Enharmonic of the
Ancients in the Westminster Review for April 1832, (See^.99 of the present
Volume.)

It may be a further question whether Paganini has not the art of touching the
harmonics upon stopped strings as well as open. His reported length of finger
is favourable to it ; and it is clearly possible to stop any note on a string with
one finger of the left hand, and by touching at the proper point with another
finger of the same hand, cause the bow to bring out a harmonic Octave, Fifth,
or as the case may be. It is even conceivable that this might be done on two
strings at once, by employing the alternate fingers. By such an arrangement,
the theoretic power of producing any given notes in harmonic sounds, is un-
limited. The practical difficulty, as said before, is another atfair.

It has been understood that Paganini's performances on the guitar are still
more wonderful than on the violin.

296

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

An amusing idea of the progress of the executive branch of
music is given by the anecdote on the Viohn.

' In the time of Lully, scarcely a note was struck out of the fixed
position of the hand, as it was not uncommon, when the note C above
the lines occurred, for the leader to cry out Gave Vut^' (mind the C,)
as a difficulty which required an effort to overcome.' — f. 223.

When the Prince of Wales laid before Giardini at Carlton
House the first set of Pleyel's quartetts (then just published),
Giardini shut the book and declared they were too difficult for
any person to perform, (p. 224.)

That cuckoos in Leicestershire sing (if that be the right
word) in the key of D, and all the owls in the neighbourhood
of Selborne hoot in B flat ; that flies and honey-bees buzz in
F, while the large humble-bee performs the same note an
octave lower, and the drowsy cock-chaffer an octave lower still ;
that crickets chirp in B, and gnats trumpet in A, while the
male and female death-watch tick responsive in B flat and G ;
are mainly resolvable into the fact that each of these classes of
creatures has a common note ; a thing in itself not stranger
than that they should have a common size, or shape, or
colour. For no part of the wonder consists in the sound's being
exactly of the pitch that is called by a certain musical name ;
inasmuch as " the pitch has long been known to be rising
through the two last centuries" (p. 234), and to have risen gra-
dually and fairly a Minor Third (p. 273). If cuckoos therefore
sing now in the key of D, their ancestors in the time of the
Civil Wars sang in the key of F, and in all intermediate pitches
at intermediate periods; always understanding thereby, that
the cuckoo's note is eternal, but what musicians take for the
pitch is altered. Why the musicians should be continually
raising the pitch of their instruments, it is not easy to define ; but
probably it has kept pace with improvements in fiddle-strings,
inasmuch as there is a constant temptation to screw up the
strings to the utmost they will bear without breaking, for the
sake of increased clearness of tone.

Of the Pianoforte, it may be noted, that no performer seems
yet to have made it a sostenuto instrument to the extent of
which it is capable. The story is well known, of the brilliant
green on the top of a chapel, which was discovered to be formed
by a chequer-work of blue and yellow. In something hke the
same manner, brief sounds may be repeated and compounded
so as to produce the effect of one sostenuto chord. An exercise
well known by the name of Steibelt's Storm, is an example of
approach to the effects meant.

When the knowledge of the theory of music has made more

Gardiner's Music of Nature,

297

progress, it is apprehended the pianoforte will not be considered
" of all instruments pre-eminently the best for the accompani-
ment of the voice." It may be hoped the time is approaching,
when neither singer nor violinist will be tolerant of a tempered
instrument. Singers sing to the pianoforte because they have
bad ears ; and they have bad ears because they sing to the
pianoforte.

The Eighteenth Chapter complains that vocalists sing out
of tune. And how should it be otherwise, when if they do not,
it must be in defiance of what they are taught and not by means
of it ? A third of a comma is considered as the limit of what
ordinary hearers do not recognize as out of tune ; and the edu-
cation of singers and other performers, as now conducted, is di-
rected to making them gulp down errors of a whole comma, or
three times the quantity that makes untuneableness, under the
various titles of temperament, defectiveness of scale, and quality
of keys. The first step towards executing, is to know ; and the
musicians do not know, and cannot write down and assign within
three times the difference that makes untuneableness, what is
in tune and what is not. A man is very likely to have all the
music-masters in the country on his back for saying this ; for
they mortally dread anything that should shake established
notions of perfection. But it is true for all that. The fault is
not cantoriim but musicorum here ; and as such may be set off
against the monkish verse.

There is a simpler explanation of the peculiar sounds of
thunder than referring them to '* distant echoes.'' It is proved
from the evidence of the eye, that the electric spark in thunder-
storms passes through very considerable distances ; and, from
the same evidence and that of other experiments, it is known
that its passage is what may be denominated instantaneous.
Hence, as the progress of sound is only at the rate of 1142 feet
per second, the ear must receive the sound which proceeds from
different points in the track of the spark, successively and not
all at once. If a line of soldiers a mile long, should all discharge
their musquets together on a visual signal as for instance the
dropping of a flag, an ear near one of the flanks must hear a
prolonged roll for nearly five seconds, diminishing in strength ;
if near the middle, it must hear the roll for about two seconds
and a half, but doubled in strength, though on the whole dimi-
nuendo as before ; if at a fifth of the w^ay from one flank to the
other, it must hear one second of double strength, followed by
three seconds of inferior force, each severally diminuendo^. But

* This phaenomenon of successive sound may be observed in asingle battalion
by a hearer placed near a flank, on the pieces being struck on the ground
together in the last motion of *' Order Arms'' by signal by eye from the fugel-
man.

298

Gardiner's Music of Nature.

if in the middle of the line there should be formed a zig-zag, it
is clear that it might be so situated as instead of the reports of
one or two musquets, to bring to the ear at once the reports of
four or five ; this therefore is competent to cause a crescendo^
and by increasing the number and extent of the zig-zags it may
be varied in an indefinite number of ways. Now if the course
of lightning may be judged of by the eye, it assumes precisely
this form of zig-zags. Again, if the ear should be placed in the
perpendicular to the middle of the line of soldiers and at a con-
siderable distance, the effect of the discharge would approach
to that of a single report ; an effect sometimes heard at sea,
where thunder has been taken for the guns of a distant action.
When the sound of thunder is very loud and brief, like the ex-
plosion of a near cannon, it is probable the discharge has taken
place into some neighbouring body on the earth's surface, and
from a cloud at a short distance ; for happily it seems to require
a nearer approach to produce the electric discharge into the
earth, than from cloud to cloud. And in cases of accident by
lightning, the near witnesses seldom fail to describe this species
of sound. In this manner all the phsenomena of the sound of
thunder may be considered as accounted for.

On the Organ, iised as it is for grave and severe composi-
tions, the most desirable improvement would be the obtaining
correct harmony by substituting a diversity of pipes and finger-
boards for a portion of the useless stops. This in fact is nothing
but what is done on the Clarionet and other instruments;
and while every performer in a band of wind music is seen carry-
ing three different instruments in different keys, nobody has
made an organ capable of performing with corectness in the three
related kevs of most ordinary demand, as for instance those ofC,
F, and A*.

* A writer in the weekly paper The United Kingdom. April 15, 1832, has failed
to understand what was said on this subject in the Article on the Enharmonic of
the Ancients in the Westminster Review for April 1832. There was no mistake ;
and the writer's misapprehension probably arose from not seeing the extract
where the subject was more amply treated of in some of the subsequent pnges.
An organ has from 500 to 5000 pipes, for the purpose of making from 6 to
60 distinct organs of different qualities of tone ; and the proposal was, that
instead of making so many organs of merely different qualities of tone, some
should be made to play correctly in different keys, as for instance one organ in
the key of C, another in the key of F, and another in the key of A ; which, as
stated above, is nothing but what takes place every day in military bands in the
case of the Clarionet. The question whether the same pipe might not be made
to serve in different keys when its sound happens to be found in both, was a
merely subsidiary question of economy.

The fact alluded to as having been first mentioned by Huygens, is appre-
hended to be something very different from continuing the scale four or five
times upwards and downwards again from a given sound. What is intended is
supposed to be the circumstance, that if, for instance, the notes C, F, D, G, C,
are sounded in the key of C, the D, which is a Dissonance, cannot make a per.
feet Minor Third with the F which precedes, and also a perfect Fourth with the

Gardiner's Music of Nature,

299

On the subject of the Clarionet it may be observed, that if
the object of providing different clarionets is to play in the re-
lated keys, they should be in the keys of C, F, and A ; and not
as stated, C, B ilat, and A. If this were done, it would be a
reason for fixing improved keyed instruments to those particular
keys, for the sake of taking advantage of the analogy.

The Trombone, or as it ought to make a point of honour of
calling itself, the Sacbut*, has the advantage of being the only
instrument besides the voice and Violin kind, which has perfect
command over its intonation, and is consequently capable of
executing correct harmony in any succession of keys. For this
reason, it may be assumed that the sacbut will some day enact
a higher ro/e than at presentf. If the statement is correct
of the instruments in actual use having been fashioned after a
specimen found in Herculaneum and' presented by the King of
Naples to George ITI, it is the best consequence known to have
arisen from the connexion between the two Courts. At the same
time it may be noted that the sacbut, besides being known to
the translators of the biblej, is lively portrayed in Mersennus ;
which is all anterior to George III.

G which follows ; and if a perfect Minor Third and Fourth be made in these
places, then the G is not the Fifth, but a sound lower by a comma than the Fifth ;
and consequently if the final C be made a perfect Fifth below this last sound, it
must needs be a comma lower than the C begun with, and if the whole of this
was repeated eis^ht or nine times, the C must end by being a whole Tone lower
than was set out with, and so on without limit.

There can be nothing wonderful in the G being a comma too low for the Fifth,
when it is purposely and of determination aforethought, taken with an interval
from the preceding sound D, of a comma less than is the interval from that
sound to the Fifth. The puzzle lies only in the fact, that no sound can make
the interval of a Minor Third below the Fourth, and also the interval of a Fourth
below the Fifth,— for this plain reason, that taking the interval of a Minor Third
below the Fourth, and the interval of a Fourth below the Fifth, do not come
to the same place or sound, but to places that dilFer by a comma. It is as if two
towns should be taken, one nine miles South from the other, and from the
southernmost a traveller should'proceed/owrfee/i miles South, and then twenty-two
North, and wonder he had not arrived at his northern town ; the whole mystery
being in the circumstance, that nine and fourteen do not ma\<e twenty-two. If
any man insists on taking a Minor Third from F to D, and then a Fourth from
that Z) to G ; he does not take the intervals in the scale, but the intervals that
are not in the scale, and consequently cannot complain of the results. History
might be looked through, without another instance of a marvel raised on such a
simple cause. The sensible inference is only, that the Dissonances are
doublet or have two forms differing by a comma ; of which one or the other must
betaken, according as the Dissonance happens to be most strongly connected
with the Fourth or with the Fifth by the accent or other peculiarly of the musi-
cal phrase. The whole of which, instead of being far to seek, was to be found
scattered in various parts of the extracts given; though it appeared in a more
collected form in the work quoted from, in a note attached to the end of the
first extract from p. 7-

* From the French Sacquehute ; which again is from the Spanish Sacahuche,
from sacar to draw out, and buche throat or stomach.

i Since this was written, mention has been seen of a band of Sacbuts, tenor
and bass, on the establishment of some of the German princes. — 1839.

X Daniel iii. 5.

300

Gardiner's Music of Nature,

That the sound of a string should be a compound of three
sounds, is one of the musical facts which wait for explanation.
It is suspected the author's account of it is not exact ; and that
instead of the sounds being the primitive, 5th, and 10th, they
are the primitive, 12th, and Major 17tb, which makes great
difference in any attempt to explain. The assumption that from
this fact the principles of music are to be derived, though very
common, may be held to be gratuitous. There can be no doubt
of there being a community of cause ; but there is no evidence
of anything else.

The 12th and Major 17th are the sounds of the /Azr6j? and
fifth parts of the string. However difficult therefore it may be
to conceive, there is the evidence of the ear that while something
is vibrating in the period that produces the primitive sound,
something else is vibrating three times as fast, and some other
thing five. And the most feasible surmise would seem to be,
that a third part of the string may be vibrating at one end and a
fifth part at the other, while the remainder, including the two
interior points which limit the vibrations of the extreme por-
tions, vibrates in the period appropriate to the whole string.
But why do the ends take no proportions but these ? Is it that
an odd number of vibrations in the period of one vibration of the
whole string, is necessary to make the vibrations after com-
mencing together in one direction, commence together in the
other also ? And if so, why does not the string divide itself
into a third at each end ? Is it perchance that thirds vibrating
together at each end would be too powerful for the remaining
third in the midle, but that a third and a fifth part do not pro-
duce the same effect, inasmuch as their vibrations in great
measure cross and counteract each other ? And if it is estab-
lished that the division into third and fifth is the only one that
can take place consistently with the motion of the remainder of
the string, — why does the string divide itself at all, and not
vibrate simpliciter through its whole length ? Is it that when
struck, it is not affected in all its particles at once, and so the
vis inertias of the particles successively acted upon, causes the
vibrations to commence in some or other of the divisions, before
a vibratory motion is communicated to the whole ? Finally,
has anybody ever heard the sound of any other portion of the
string ? For if this can be heard, it goes against the theory of
the two ends.

*' Modulation" does not appear to be well defined. Instead
of " a progression of chords, or mixed sounds," it is passing
from one key to another ; a change of key being defineable as
consisting in taking a new portion of the string to begin with
in the calculation of the harmonic al divisions.

Gardiner's Music of 'Nature.

301

The complexions, as the author styles them (p. 438), of the
different keys, constitute a vexata qucestio which has no appear-
ance of being speedily settled. Any difference in the effect of
the same music arranged in different keys, can only arise from
some of four cauiies ; First, a difference in pitch ; as for in-
stance, if a violin should produce a marked alteration in the
effect of the same tune or air, by screwing up or letting down
the strings through a given interval ; Secondly, an alteration in
the quality of tone of a given instrument, by taking the same
notes in one part of the instrument instead of another ; as the
self-same written notes and at precisely the same pitch and
without aijy difference in the intervals, may produce a different
effect on a guitar from being sounded by stopping near the
middle of the thicker strings, instead of near the top of the
thinner ; Thirdly, a difference in the practical execution in
different keys ; as for instance playing an air on the black
keys of the pianoforte or with a great admixture of them, will
give a different fingering from playing it in the key of C or on
the white, and this may produce some difference of effect either
directly or through acting on the imagination of the performer ;
Fourthly, an alteration in the degree in which the notes on a
fixed instrument severally approximate to the true sounds,
when the scale is begun on any particular one for the key-note.
It may be conceded at once, that the three first causes may in
certain cases produce a certain degree of effect ; but the last is
the point to which most importance attaches. And the first
question that suggests itself hereon is, Who are the foremost
in asserting the difference of keys ? Are they the singers and
violinists ; or are they the organists and pianofortists ? If
they are the latter, then the whole may be suspected to be an
innocent partiality, a branch of the polypus HagncBy for turn-
ing the defects of their instrument into beauties. There are
some points which want settling also, before issue can fairly be
joined. If the key of F is " rich, mild, sober, and contempla-
tive," and G " gay and sprightly — wdien F v as G, as it was
a hundred years ago, was F " gay and sprightly," or *' rich,
mild, sober, and contemplative" ? A nd if some sprite should
shift the whole strings of a pianoforte an inch to the right, so
that the string which before fell under the hammer of F should
now fall under the hammer of G, would the key of G still be
" gay and sprightly,'' or would it be turned into " sober
and contemplative" ? If these were exactly settled, it would
be easier to debate the subject than at present. But in the
mean time the vehement presumption is, that so far as the diffe-
rent character of keys has any real foundation in the construc-
tion of the intervals, it will be found to depend on their

302

Gardiner's Music of Nature,

comparative approximation to correct harmony in different
cases, and not on their departure from it. The fact long
practically known to musicians though not carried into its
consequences, of the duplicity of the Dissonances, — and the
sharpness and vigour given by making the distinction between
the Great and Small Tone in those and other places, — are more
than sufficient to account for any variety. A comma is about
one-third of the smallest simple interval in the scale, which is
that between the Major and Minor Thirds, Sixths, &c. ; and if
an engraver were to maintain that rubbing down the promi-
nences of his engraving by a third part in one place or in another
was a matter of indifference, he would do what in their dread
of puzzle is done by the musicians.

In p. 455 on " Tuning" appears another miraculous instance
of the state of musical science as respects first principles.

*f If we stop a violin string mid-way between the nut and the bridge,
either half of the string will sound the octave above to the whole
string ; and if we vibrate two-thirds of the string, this portion will
sound the fifth above to the whole strin;^;. The same law applies to
wind instruments and all sounding bodies. — Upon such simple facts
we might have supposed the musical scale to be founded ; but when
we come to tune a pianoforte, and raise the fifths one upon another,
to our surprise we find the last note C, too sharp for the C we set out
with. Thu inexplicab/e difficulty no one has attempted to solve ; the
Deity seems to have left it in an unfinished state,, to show his inscrutable
j)Owei\' — p. 455.

Will it be readily believed a century hence, that this " inex-
plicable difficulty," this " dignus vindice nodus''' which the Deity
is inti'oduced to settle, — was nothing more than the fact that
i of -I of I of -I of -I of I of I of I- of I of f of I- of # (a schoolboy's
question in vulgar fractions), is not equal to ^ of | of ^ of ^ of |
of I of I ; or as as an algebraist would more brieiiy state it,
is not equal topl^? Why should it? Would not the
wonder have been if it had ? Is it any more wonderful than
that twice three is not five ? We take two-thirds of a string
and of its remainder, twelve times over ; and then halve the
same string seven times over ; and finally call on the Deity to
show the reason, why we have not arrived at the same point.
This comes of instruments with keys. When the attention has
been directed from youth up, to the black and white keys of a
pianoforte, the thing appears incomprehensible ; yet the whole
question resolves itself into whether the Fifth be really seven-
twelfths of the Octave,— which it is not. If a pianoforte is
tuned to an equable division like the guitar, — in which the
Fifth is not a Fifth but only something like it,— then twelve
such Fifths will come to the same sound as seven Octaves ; and

Second Supplement to <^c.

303

if not, not. As it is, the musicians are in a state of hi^^h quarrel
with Providence, for not having made f^^'^ equal to|~^^. Th€fy
wonder and fret, and want to have the constitution of arithme-
tic altered, to save the band's-men of the Guards from carrying
three clarionets ; for this is what it comes to. They are not
content to inquire what is harmony, but they are anxious to
impress on the Creator what they could have wished should
have been harmony ; and the particular object of their desires,
is that f^^"^ should have been equal to 1^^.

But there is no need to confine the wonder to the Fifth. If
a Fourth be taken twelve times, it will fail to coincide with five
Octaves, by the same quantity as the Fifth ; only instead of
somethinor more than a comma too much, it will be too little.
A Major Third taken three times, will fall short of the Octave
by about two commas ; and a Minor Sixth, will exceed two
Octaves by the same. A Minor Third taken four times, will
exceed the Octave by about three commas, or on a rough esti-
mate the difference between a note and its flat or sharp ; and a
Major Sixth, will fall short of three Octaves by the same. A
mystery is a less mystery, when it is only one of half-a-dozen.
And what does it all prove, but that the true intervals do not
divide the octave into equal parts, and consequently they are not
interchangeable, as musicians might have found convenient ?

The authors way of ever and anon dropping an octave, has a
tendency to obscure the calculations, and is attended with no
benefit but that of keeping certain notes within certain lines.

If any interest has been excited on points connected with
musical knowledge, the writer of this Article may boast of hav-
ing co-operated with the author of " The Music of Nature*."

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

Art. VI. — Second Si/pplement to the Article on the Silk and Glove

Trades'''' in the JVestmimter Review for 1 April, 1832.
^HE '* True Sun" returns to the charget. He says, that in
saying that the tradesman to whom the consumer of the
monopoly-priced gloves or stockings would have transferred the
shilling may lose custom to that amount, *' but to the same
extent, precisely, some other tradesman gains an increase of
custom," — he did not mean the glover or silk-weaver, but he
meant the man to whom the glover or silk-weaver would trans-
fer the shilling in the course of trade.

This is a new meaning ; but nobody was bound to infer it
from the words employed.

* For a Note bearing on the second paragraph of this Article, see the end of
the Volume,
t 2 July, 1832.

304

Second Supplement

It might pass for an answer, to reply, that if the man to whom
the glover or silk-weaver would transfer the shilling is to be
brought in on one side, the man to whom the tradesman who
loses custom would have transferred it must be brought in on
the other. If the statement had been that the loss to this last
man should have been reckoned and have made loss the third,
the opponent would not have been a moment in finding out,
that it was equally fair to bring in the man to whom the glover
or silk-weaver transferred.

But this answer, though perhaps sufficing in point of logic,
is not the best that can be given ; for it is only parrying one
illusory item of an account, by showing that the same rule that
admitted it would admit another that would neutralize it. The
fact is, that both the items are illusory, and only specimens of
the error mentioned before, of counting the same things over
and over. The shilling to the trade of the glove- maker, in-
cludes the gains of the individuals to whom he may transfer any
portion of it, and of all others to whom they again m.ay transfer
any portion, to the end of the process. The shilling is not
transferred over and over in the entire ; but twopence, it may
be, sticks with the glove-maker as his profit, and with his
workmen as their wages ; and the rest (tenpence) is transfer-
red to diffbrent persons, some in the shape of wages and some
of profits, and of these portions a part, as perhaps twopence
more, sticks with them, and the remainder is transferred to
somebody else ; and so on, the whole shilling being enjoyed in
the end by somebody. If the payment instead of being made with
a shilling was made with a peck of wheat, of which the glove-
maker and his workmen put a pint into their pot, — and the
tradesmen to whom the remainder was made over, put another,
— and so on till the whole w^as eaten ; it would be plain that
the actual benefits to the trade and all concerned in it, amounted
to a peck of wheat, and not to a peck over and over. And for any
benefits that may be alleged as arising to the concerned in the
wheat trade, it must be the same thing to them in the end
whether the peck is procured from them all at once, to be passed
in a mass to the glove-maker, — or whether it is procured by
twopennyworths at a time by various sets of people. In the
trades from which custom is taken, the opposite processes take
place. There was a mistake therefore in counting the portions
of a shilling over and over.

The next statement is

' That the robber's gain,'* and the gain to the branch of manu-
facturing industry in which he is presumed to be engaged," are two
things. For the imaginary individual in question was presumed to

to Article on " Silk and Glove Trade,''

305

have two sources of gain — robbery on the highway and mercantile
pursuits.'

There is a mistake here. The man was never " presumed to
have two sources of gain on the contrary it was distinctly
stated, that he might have which of the two he liked, but he
could not have both. If the robber puts the shilling into his
pocket and takes it out again to apply to the benefit of his trade,
there is not a gain of a shilling to his trade, and of the same
shilling to the robber over again. Putting a shilling into his
pocket and taking it out again, is not gain.

The same mistake runs through the statement as repeated ; —

* There are two distinct operations in the case. The robber's gain
on the high road, balances the robbed man's loss. This is the first
operation. The robber's trade— (a thing quite apart from his dealings
on the highway) — is enlarged by the amount of his plunder — while
some dealer, to whom his victim would have transferred the money,
has his transactions diminished to the same extent. This is the
second operation — one, as it appears to us, obviously distinct from the
other.'

The error is simply in making the robber's gain balance one
thing, and the employment to his trade at the same time balance
a second thing ; whereas if the shilling is taken to enlarge the
robber's trade, the gain to the robber as distinct from the
enlargement of his trade, is thereby annihilated and made
non-existent.

In what afterwards follows, the " True Sun " may be held to
have overlooked the words — " as distinct/ram the advantage to
his trade and the charge of "jumbling " does not appear to
be made out. That the man's success as a robber actually does,
in the case supposed, *' exempt him from suffering in the same
degree from the effects of monopoly, as those around him do."
contains nothing contrary to the statement advanced. The rob-
ber gives three shillings for a pair of gloves, of which he has had
the luck to steal one shilling ; on the whole therefore he only
gives two, or is in the same situation as he would have been if
there had been neither robbing nor monopoly. And what was
stated was, that if he is obliged to give this shilling to the
monopoly he does not gain it. He may be the monopoly him-
self if he chuses ; but the shilling he puts into his left-hand
pocket for the monopoly, he does not also keep in his right-hand
one for himself.

These objections, at the same time, are highly useful ; and
have done much towards increasing the clearness of the case.

VOL. II.

306

Wainewright's Vindication of

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

Art. IX. — 1. A Vindication of Dr. Paley s Theory of Morals from the
Principal Objections of Mr. Dugald Stewart ; Mr, Gisborne ; Dr.
Pearson; and Dr. Thomas Brown . H it h an Appendix ^ containing
Strictures on some Remarks of Dr. Whately, Principal of St.
Alban^s Hall, Oxford. By the Rev. Latham Wainewright,M.A.,
F.S.A., of Emanuel College, Cambridge. — 8vo. pp. 204. Lon-
don ; Hatchard. 1830.

2. Fort Risbane ; or Three Days Quarantine. — 12mo. pp. 266.
London ; Smith, Elder, and Co. 1832.

rjiHE first of these, is a vindication of Paley for the support
he gave to the principle of " utility." It is of comparatively
small importance to assign the degrees of priority in the illus-
tration of a useful principle ; but everybody knows that Priest-
ley was the modern inventor (for the same thing may be in-
vented many times) of the theory of "the greatest sum of hap-
piness," which was then taken up by Bentham, and afterwards
by Paley*. The thing is the thing ; and the object is to support
it here.

There seems? as noted by his vindicator (p. 7), to be some
confusion in Paley's language, between utility being an obliga-
tion, and a criterion or standard; and it is very probable the
same may be traced elsewhere. The first position to be aimed
at, is the establishing that utility, or the production of the
greatest quantity of happiness in the aggregate, is the sub-
stantial standard of what men at various times and places have
more or less darkly aimed at under the titles of morality, vntue,
fitness of things, the honestum, the decorum, and what not be-
sides. The next is, to give an answer to the question, why
or from what motive affecting himself, a man should regulate
his own conduct by the rule which will establish the greatest
aggregate of happiness, not of himself simpliciter, but of all
concerned; — which constitutes what is meant by obligation.
And here an answer, at least of this world, would have been
hopeless, if the constitution of nature had not been such that
it happens to be proveable, that the rule which will promote the
greatest happiness in the ag^rregate, is the rule a conipliance
with which, taking all the adjuncts and probabilities into the
account, is more likely to promote the ultimate happiness of the
individual, than any other that can he pointed out before trial.
There is no use in saying, that there have been successful
thieves and fortunate assassins ; the question is, whether the

* See a fuU statement with dates, in the Article on the *♦ Greatest-Happiness
Principle," in the Westminster Review for 1 July 18ii9. Art. 16. Kp. 125 of Vol.
I. of the present TVorh.)

Paley. Fort Risban.

.307

proportion is sufficient to make thieving and assassination
good and likely trades upon the whole. The fallacy is simply in
assuming that to he known, which is not known. If a man
could be sure of obtaining the 20,000/. prize in a lottery, it
would be policy to give 19,000/. for a ticket ; but to do it with-
out being sure, would be the act of an idiot. Just such a folly
does a man commit, who breaks through any of the tried and
approved rules of morality, without knowing whether he shall
be the lucky man that escapes the consequences or not. The
consequences do not fall, at least in their extremity, on all ;
but the question is, whether it be the act of a wise man, to incur
the risk of the consequences at all. This is an obligation^ — if
there is one for a man's keeping his fingers out of the fire. It
might make a more immediate and urgent one, if there were a
devil as on the stage, appointed to do summary justice on every
act of immorality of a certain magnitude. But there is not ; or
at all events, as expressed by a poetical philosopher, he very
often waits." Whence arises a practical necessity for a more
homely and instant obligation ; and it consists in what has
been described above.

Dugald Stewart and others, it is stated (p. 8), have objected,
that this system entrusts to every individual the power of de-
ciding what line of conduct will, at all times and in all places,
be most beneficial to the great bulk of mankind. And how
should it be otherwise, or what conceivable rule is there that
is not liable to an objection of the same kind ? There is no
obscurity about what rule it is the objectors have in their eye,
and by reference to which they think they settle the question.
They mean a religious rule, sanctioned by the authority of
revelation and of future reward and punishment. But in what
way does this remove the difficulty ? A religious rule cannot
in the nature of things define what is and is not to be done,
with more precision than a moral rule ; for all that the powers
of language can do for the one in the v/ay of preciseness and
explanation, the other if it pleases may borrow. To say that
the religious rule introduces a new motive, is an evasion of the
question. It does introduce one ; but the question was not
of preventing men s contempt of a rule's sanction, but their
evasion or misapprehension of its terms. The shortest way
is at once to take the particular rule the objectors have in vie\v.
Have not all imaginable breaches of its spirit, or of what sen-
sible and untempted men acknowledge to be such, been carried
into practice under the express plea of obedience to its letter ?
What species of persecution and corporal suffering, for example,
has not been inflicted upon men under the pretence of " com-
pelling them to come in,'' or delivering them unto Satan
u 2

308

Wainewright's Vindication of

for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved " ?
There is no hostile intention in this ; and no dread of anybody
that may chuse to misinterpret it. But the authenticated fact
and stamped in the history of mankind, is that without any
exception, no rule has been able to guard itself against the
misconstructions or misapprehensions of those who profess to
follow it. If answer be made, that these misconstructions are
in the eyes of all impartial and considerate persons directly
opposed to the spirit and bearing of the whole, — the same is
equally applicable to the moral rule. The misfortune is, that
when men want to break a rule, they are neither impartial nor
considerate. Show us how to ensure a man's being these, and
he shall quickly be made to acknowledge the spirit and bearing
of a moral rule. The objectors therefore have taken nothing by
their motion.

It has pleased the same opponents, to apply to the theory of
utility the title of " the selfish theory of morals." Now this is
a play upon a word. The secondary meaning of the word *' sel-
fish " implies an undue or culpable attention to a man's own
feelings or interests ; and if this is what the opponents mean,
they are bound to prove that it applies. But the truth is they
intend to stand upon the primary fact that the motives urged
must necessarily apply to a man's " self," and take the benefit
of the secondary meaning by a side wind. Because the motives
which act upon a man must needs operate upon himself and
not upon somebody else, it does not follow that they are selfish
in the bad meaning of the term ; but this is the fallacy in-
volved. Take any case that can be chosen, — the case for in-
stance of a martyr, — and there can be no denying that his
motive whatever it may be, must be one that acts upon him-
self. If like Stephen he sees the heavens opened, still this is
a motive that acts upon himself; though it would be a fraud
and abuse of language, to denominate it what is ordinarily
meant by selfish.

A difficulty that occurs in this place, is to account for the
actions of individuals, who without any powerful expectations
of reward or punishment in a future state, have voluntarily sub-
mitted to great evil, as for example the loss of life, for the main-
tenance of a principle. The solution must be in the constitution
of the habits of thinking ; which make life after the sacrifice
of the principle, a scene of greater suffering than the removal
of it by death. It is no uncommon event, to see individuals
under the pressure of particular kinds of losses and privations
though unaccompanied with bodily pain, either seek death, or
give way to such a process of despondency as is only death
under a lingering form ; and if an individual, in consequence

Paley. Fort Risban,

309

of the previously confirmed constitution of his habits, would
suffer the same degree of mental pain from the abandonment
of a principle, there appears no reason why he should not pre-
fer death as in the instances alluded to. This motive might be
designated, the Sense of Heroic Obligation. The most re-
markable instance of its operation, — if it may be assumed to
belong to true history, — is that of Curtius. In his case there
seems to have been nothing to point out such a sacrifice as the
peculiar duty of the individual, and consequently no loss of
public opinion to be attendant on the non-performance. What
was it then that outweighed in the mind of Curtius the natural
love of life ? By the very nature of the case, all chance of
enjoying honours was to be at an end; and though it is possi-
ble he might possess some vague idea that deeds of patriotism
were rewarded in Elysium, it has never been believed that
Curtius was a martyr to religious expectation. Curtius then,
in consequence of the approbation with which public and ex-
traordinary acts of patriotism were regarded in Rome, had
through all his life connected the highest degree of mental
pleasure with the performance of such actions ; and this plea-
sure, roused to the highest pitch by the idea of the surpassing
exertion he contemplated, was more than sufficient to outweigh
any pain attendant on the apprehension of dying.

At the same time this principle of action, dependent chiefly
on the formation of habitual connexions of ideas, is by no means
peculiar to cases like that of Curtius. It is probable on the
contrary, that it is one of the most universal of all moral agents,
and acts perpetually as the sheath and preservative of deeper
principles. The Creator appears to have surrounded the great
organs of both physical and moral feeling, with a cloud of sub-
servient sensations and precautionary irritabilities, which must
be broken through before the superior sources of action are
brought into question. A man wall no more exist under the
continual irritation of the fear of hell or of the gallow^s (which
for popular use may be considered as the " ultima ratio" of
religious obligation and worldly expediency), than he will exist
under the continual irritation of any powerful physical stimulus.
The stimulus may be applied ; but it will either destroy the
man, or lose its effect. Hence it has been wisely ordained,
that the machinery of moral existence should be carried on prin-
cipally through the medium of the habits, so as to save the wear
and tear of the great principles within. For the most august
and awful motives, if continually brought forward as the object of
vulgar and ignuble familiarity ,will infallibly in the end be viewed
with the same unconcern as that with which a grave-digger re-
gards mortality.

310

Wainewright's Vindication of

Nor can any change be imagined so perfect and complete, as
that which takes place through the medium of the habits in
consequence of some great affection implanted in the mind.
For the habits, which insinuate themselves into the thousand
inconsiderable acts of life, do really constitute by far the greater
part of man's moral conduct. And when these are moulded
by the introduction of a new principle, nothing can more nearly
approach to the making of a new man ; nor can any stronger
distinction be drawn, between a principle which may be said
to be vital or actually living and flourishing, and one which is
only matter of dead and fruitless speculation, — than that the
one insinuates itself into practice through the habits, while the
other remains in the shape of a barren and theoretic assent.

A perfect knowledge of human nature was in the prayer,
" Lead us not into temptation." No man ever resists temptation,
after it has begun to be temptation. It is in the outworks of
the habits that the defence must lie. No apprentice ever re-
frained from his master's gold, after his eye had once begun
to gloat upon it, and he had got over the habitual feehng which
made any approach to its appropriation an impossibility. No
Joseph ever resisted, except throuijh the impulse of pure fear,
after he had once begun to revolve the possibility of giving
way.

The defenders of a " moral faculty" maintain, that the exist-
ence of moral sentiments in the infant mind is not sufficiently
accounted for by imitation, instruction, and the habitual asso-
ciation of ideas ; and therefore they plead for som^ething which
they call a moral faculty." This resembles Cicero's inti-
mation, that the readiness of boys to learn is so surprismg,
as to lead to the suspicion that they must have existed in some
previous state ; — a surmise which a venerable classical peda-
gogue was wont regularly to meet with the assurance, that in
all his experience he had never fallen into any such conclusion.
Instead of evincing any innate moral faculty, children are
evidently by nature as free from it as from the letters of the
alphabet. A young child has no more idea of not affirming
or denying a given proposition as may suit its momentary con-
venience, than it has of not ejecting a hot mouthful and sub-
stituting one that is more pleasant to the feel. When it
has been told that if it says the thing that is not, it will be
whipt, its friends will run away from it, and finally it will
go to the>bad place,— all making good and competent motives
to a child or any other person, it speedily begins to comprehend
that the truth is to be told and the falsehood let alone ; but in
all this there is clearly no display of anything like an innate
faculty.

Paley. Fort Risban.

311

If there is any such thin;:^ as a faculty established for the
purpose of telling man what is right and wrong, it at all events
varies very oddly in different latitudes. For there is scarcely
any assignable thing that is in some places announced to be
wrong, that has not in others been declared to be venial or
right. . In short the boasted monitor is so evidently reducible
to Locke's definition, of being *' our own opinion of the nature
of our actions," that its existence at all must depend on prov-
ing, that men's opinions of the nature of their actions are never
either contrary or wrong.

Nostra res agitur in the Note in p. 110.

* Respecting Mr. Beiitham's admired work on Morals and Legis-
lation," in which it is apparent that he has devoted more of his
attention to the latter of these branches than to the former, I shall
only observe that it betrays much inconsistency in his manner of ap-
plying the principles of utility. When he describes the greatest
amount of happiness" to be the rule of our conduct, which he
does in his first chapter, he so far agrees with Paley ; and where
he considers it as the sole obligation, (Chap. II. sect. 19,) his opinion
is closely allied to that of Hume. His commentators, however, main-
tain, that the great object he has in view, (though it is certainly men-
tioned in a very summary way, Chap. XVII. sec. 6 and 7,) is to show
that every man, by consulting the greatest happiness of the commu-
nity, adopts the surest method of securing his own. If the truth of
Revelation be admitted^ there can be no question that this position
may be fully established ; but without this admission, the attempt
would as clearly fail. In numerous instances it will not be denied
that the assertion may be just ; but since there are many cases in which
the most patriotic sacrifices would be attended by no such result as is
here predicted, I must again ask, — what can morally oblige any ra-
tional agent to pursue the welfare of the public, with pain, poverty,
and ruin staring him in the face, and without the remotest prospect
of any future recompense for all the intermediate sufferings which
this class of moralists consider him as called upon to undergo ?' —
Note. p. 110.

The answer has been given already ;— Mental habits and as-
sociations, producing a greater amount of pain from the breach
of the principle that the welfare of the public is to be preserved,
than from the endurance of the consequences of maintaining
it.

** Fort Risban*" is a brief specimen of the polemical novel,
which is one of the inventions of the present age. It treats of
morals, politics, and matters high, and ends as in duty bound,
with the intimation of a marriage that is likely to be the result.

* Why does the author mis-spell a French word which is in all the dictionaries,
by writing BUbane f

312

Wainewright's Vindication of

Amidst the clash of discordant collocutors, it is not always easy
to be certain what the author meant to stand, and what to be
confuted ; but a fair inference is, that what he does not answer,
he intends should be held good. Besides, Mr. Pungent is the
marrying hero ; who is always in the right. In this view there
is a passage which will admit of a comment, if it can be done
to edification.

^ MR. HARTLEY.

' There has been much said and written about the greatest-happi-
ness principle. But every man forms a different estimate of happiness —

" Some place their bliss in action, some in ease."

How then are we to be agreed as to what is the greatest happiness,
since each endeavours to reach the goal by a path of his own tracing ?

MR. MC CORQUODALE.

Truth, when once made manifest, must be universally acknow-
ledged.

MR. HARTLEY.

But if the happiness of one party be inimical to the happiness of
another ?

MR. CYCLOVATE.

The greatest aggregate of happiness, reckoning in kind, duration,
and degree, must always be sought ; we are not to consider individual
cases, but the whole mass. It is a reference to this principle which,
in disputed cases, distinguishes the true from the pseudo-morality.

MR. PUNGENT.

This would lead to very pernicious results, and has already led to
the promulgation of a great deal of nonsense.

MR. M^ CORQUODALE.

That remark only evinces your total ignorance of the subject, sir.

MR. PUNGENT.

What say you to this ? If, for example, it was ever contended
that it was a moral act for a man to kill and eat his father, it was
supported on the ground that it was for the happiness of society and
of themselves that men, on arriving at a certain stage of decrepitude,
should be put out of pain, and that it was a mark of respect for their
sons to eat them. There may be doubt whether the reasoning was
good, but there is none that this was the reasoning." The Utilitarian
school strangely mystifies and confuses the plainest rules of morality.

MR. CYCLOVATE.

On the contrary, it demonstrates clearly, that for individuals-
societies— nations— to ' do as they would be done by,' is sound earthly
policy."

Paley» Fort Risban.

313

MR. PUNGENT.

Proving what has been proved more than eighteen centuries back ;
— wrapping in obscurity a beautifully simple precept, which can be
brought home to every bosom. There is nothing vague, nothing un-
defined in this ; it embraces the whole code of morality ; and a man
can walk in the high path of duty — can never doubt as \o the recti-
tude of his actions, if they satisfactorily evince that he has complied
with the injunction, " Do as you would be done unto." Although
men may want to be told that this is their duty, yet few would dissent
from its truth. To preach this doctrine is therefore useful ; but to
pretend to it as a modern discovery is absurd ; while its new name,

the greatest-happiness principle," at once involves us in a maze of
perplexities. How much more difficult to answer, " What is for the
greatest happiness of man ?" than to learn the simple rule to " do
unto others as we would be done unto.'' Thus, then, the modern inno-
vation deprives the precept of the Divine moralist of that wide-extended
application which caused it to be of practical utility alike to the igno-
rant and to the wise,' — p. 157.

As Mr. Tythinkind here calls out for his supper, there is
every appearance that the author meant this to stand. The
passage about eating fathers, is hardly new enough to he non-
sense ; for it is little more than PascaFs remark, Le larciriy
Vinceste, le meurtre des enfans et des peres, tout a eu sa place
entre des actions vertueuses^ T It is difficult to see how either
it or Pascal's, mystifies or confuses any rules of morality. In the
charge of " proving what has been proved more than eighteen
centuries back," for " proved" should be read enjoined
and there is wide difference between a precept and a proof.
The answer to the intimation that the greatest-happiness
principle" is superfluous since the promulgation of the rule of
** doing to others as we would they should do to us,'' — is that
the followers of that rule cannot interpret it themselves, without
calling the despised '* greatest-happiness principle'* in aid ; as
was demonstrated in loco^.

As was intimated in the course of the controversy referred to,
the mistake of the theologians is in not pushing the " greatest-
happiness principle" to its conclusions, and then appealing to
the arguments derivable from it in their own favour, in the same
manner as they would to deductions from chronology or any
other human science.

* *' Theft, incest, the murder of children and of fathers, all have, in some
place or other, been ranked among virtuous actions.'' Pensees. lire partie,
art. 6.

t Westminster Review for 1 January 1830. Art. U. (p,2iQ of Vol. I of the
present Work.)

314

Supplement to

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

Art. X. — Supplement to the Article on the Renewal of Bank Charter''

in the fVestmi?ister Review for 1 /w/y, 1832.
f\F all ways of studying a subject, there is none like keeping
^ up a controversy before tlie-public. Tlie idea of public in-
spection wonderfully sharpens the attention ; and all that may
be error, has the chance of been rubbed off by collision. In fact
a theory which has not in the language of the Universities

kept an Act" of this nature, is not much to be depended on for
either accuracy or force.

The most taking argument that has been observed in favour
of private banking since the publication of the Article to which
this is a supplement, is that the sovereigns are men's own, and
" a man may do as he will with his own.'' In other words, if
the bankers take the people's sovereigns, it is by consent, and
therefore there can be no harm.

The first step is to close unreservedly with the statement,
that the sovereigns are the people's own. They are their own
for the simple reason that they paid for them. If neither taxes
nor government existed, men would traffic by means of an in-
strument of exchange of some kind, and this instrument they
must pay for themselves, by the token that it is certain they
cannot get it without. If the instrument is assumed to be corn,
and a man on an average has twenty bushels of corn always in
his hands which he is to employ as the instrument of exchange,
he must have paid for these twenty bushels as much as for any
other he eats or deals in, and therefore they are his own. And
if a government subsequently arises and issues coins, twenty
of which come to be used by the same individual in lieu of the
bushels of corn, it is evident that directly or indirectly, he has
got possession of these coins by giving in exchange the bushels
of corn or something else that was equivalent ; and therefore
the coins are as much his as was the corn.

But this does not suffice to prove, that the private bankers
should go on taking men's money by their consent and nothing
be done to stop it. If men consent to it, it is because they
know of no way of obtaining paper and having the value of
their gold besides ; and the reason they know of no way, is
because there is none provided. If there was no way of a
man's recovering the value of his silver tankards and having the
use of glass too, and if there was no dignity or splendour attached
to using tankards rather than glass,— men, or great numbers of
them, would give their tankards for glass to an individual that
should set up the trade of a glass-banker, as readily as they
now give their gold for paper. But it would only be for want of
being furnished with a better way ; and this way, if it de-

Renewal of Bank Charter^

315

pended on an act of the government, it would be the duty of the
government to provide, or it does not perform the office ^vhich is
the object of its creation. The main object of the thing called
a government, is to do for the public by means of a common
action, those things which cannot be done for it by the opera-
tion of individual interests.

A case in point, is the institution of property. If property
were to be in common, it would be in vain to argue that every
man's interest in the promotion of the general produce would
be the same that it is now. An individual's interest would be
like the interest of sailors in a ship short of water, who should
be sent to the water-cask to drink at discretion but with an ex-
hortation to remember that they were interested in the holding
out of the common stock. Every man knows that the fallacy
in this, lies in the present gain of each individual from increas-
ing the draught before him, being vastly greater than its visi-
ble operation on his final interest. A pint more to an individual,
is but a drop a-piece among a ship's crew ; but if every man
drinks two pints instead of one, the month's stock must be ex-
pended in a fortnight. In the same way, if an individual takes
a banker's one-pound note, the visible or ostensible loss to him
by that particular act, is only equal to the fraction of a pound
which is expressed by the portion of the currency he habitually
employs, divided by the whole or forty millions ; and upon such
an inducement it is plain that neither he nor any other indi-
vidual will act. The ultimate result however is, that the pub-
lic is robbed of forty millions, which ought to have been
divided among them in the shape of a reduction of taxes to the
amount of the two millions which is the yearly value. If the
government will not take measures, an individual cannot help
himself, and therefore may as well take the banker's note as
not. But this does not go to prove, that the government ought
not to provide.

The proposal that the people should save their annual two
millions through the operation of their government, has been
likened to the pretences set up by monopolists like the East
India Company, of the necessity for preventing individuals from
entering into certain trades, and otherwise coercing them for their
own good ; and it has been inferred as a special consequence,
that if a government should set up a National Bank, it ought
at all events to leave individuals at liberty to take the paper of
private bankers if they like it better. The defect in this com-
parison is, that in one case the decision is really left to the
people, and in the other it is not. Is it for the benefit of the people
that two millions a-year should be taken off* the taxes and every
man enjoy his share, or that the two millions should be served
out to the private bankers on condition of their saving the

316

Viscount Milton's Address

trouble of finding paper ? This is the question proposed to the
good sense of the public ; and the East India Company does
nothing that is analogous. The nearest it could come would
be to say, " Is it for the benefit of the public that it should be
allowed to trade in a way that we tell them they would lose by ?"
But who believes the We f

If it is once decided that it is for the good of the public that
the two millions a -year should be saved, then the plea that at
all events men should be left at liberty to do the other if they
please, stands on the same ground as the plea that after the
institution of property every man should have the right to de-
clare off that chose. If it be once determined that a general
good is to be obtained by uniting in a certain course, from that
moment all that prevents the attainment of that good becomes
an evil which the public has a right to suppress ; and the plea
that this implies a breach of private freedom, is as inoperative
as a claim to the freedom of darting a dagger's point into all
conceivable parts of space, though a neighbour's throat should
happen to be in the way. The throat being in the way, — the
fact that the private freedom cannot be enjoyed without evil to
others being the result, — is the reason why the freedom becomes
no freedom, and the indulgence a delict.

The " Bank of England" appears to have been pretty well
beaten out of the luxury of secrecy, and has very Httle left to
struggle for on that score. The country bankers also are too
numerous and too strongly backed by public opinion, to give it
the chance of enjoying any monopoly of what may be called the
honest business of a banker. Why then does not the Govern-
ment come down upon the contesting parties, with a demand
that each shall confine itself to its proper business ; — that " The
Bank" shall give up dabbling in discounts, and the country
bankers cease to rob the community by coining ? And why
does not " The Bank,'' seeing that it can do nothing else, come
forward and beg of the Government to transform it into a
worthy creditable organ like the Victualling Office, — a paper
Mint where the proceeds should be fairly set down to the
account of the community, and the directors go to heaven
when they die, like men in other departments of the public
service ?

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

Art. XV. — Address to the JMudowners of England, on the Corji Laws.
By the Viscount Milton.— London ; kidgway. 1832. pp. 46.

THIS makes another, and from the quarter whence it comes
a highly important and influential attempt, to induce the

on the Corn Laws,

317

landlords and other classes of the agricultural population, not
to make fools of themselves by running their heads like wood-
cocks into the snare that is set before them by the enemies of
the country on the subject of the Corn Laws. For, this time, it
is not a pining manufacturer or starving operative, coming to
represent how hard it is that he should be prevented from selling
the labour of his hands on pretence of benefiting the grower of
corn, or to ask the corn -grower what he will think of it if the
manufacturers, who are two to one already and to a certainty
will have the power of doing it in a year or two, should lay a
seventeen years' duty on home-grown corn by way of reprisals
for the robbery. that has been inflicted on them; — nor is it a
petty landlord who has the genius to tell his tenants, as one did
in Yorkshire, that he will lower their rent, but on condition that
it shall be raised again within twelve months after an alteration
in the corn laws*;— but the noble heir to one of the first rentals
in the country, who tells the corn-growers and they know it to
be true, that he *' has no interest but in common with them ;
all his temporal advantage is bound up with theirs ; whatever
is for their advantage, must conduce to his, and to that of those
who are the most dear to him."

' Fellow Countrymen^

' It is my desire to invite your attention to a question, the importance
of which is acknowledged by all, though few, perhaps, estimate it as
highly as 1 do.'

* I address myself to you, because it is through, and by you, that
the alterations which appear to rae essential to the welfare of the
country, must be effected. Any material change in a system of laws,
deemed by a considerable branch of the community conducive to its
prosperity and security, ought rather to be carried into effect by the
consent of that branch, than in the form of a triumph over it ; and not-
withstanding the interval, which seems to separate the opinions of
men, concerning the Corn Trade, we need not despair of this result.
That it must be attained, however, through appeals, (perhaps fre-
quently made) to the good sense, and, I may add, to the good feelings
of men, rather than by any overt attack upon opinions which others
may consider as prejudices, but which they themselves regard as well
founded, I am thoroughly persuaded. I am most anxious, therefore,
that you should consider, whether you have seriously and comprehen-
sively examined the validity of these opinions, and whether the argu-
ments, by which they are defended, are sound or unsound. These

* The condition was, that the tenant should give a memorandum in Avriting
agreeing that if any alteration should take place in the Corn Laws in the way
of removing or diminishing the duties ou foreign corn, the tenant should on the
next following Ladyday (not being less than six months after such alteration in
the laws shall have been in operation) return to the former r^nt, or else give
notice to quit.

318

Viscount Milton's Address

are questions of the utmost importance to our arriving at a legitimate
conclusion.' — p, 1.

Lord Milton begins with asking, whether it is possible that
it can be beneficial to a nation, or in other words to the indi-
viduals who compose the nation, to pay a high price for its sub-
sistence. It is certain there are many who care very little
about this ; but the answer may make a valid reason why those
many, in the failure of all gentler arguments, should be co-
erced by the more, as happens in the case of other enemies of
the community. And the reason he gives why it cannot, is
that admitting to any extent the increase of prices which is the
result to the agricultural classes, it is plain that these classes
must at the same time bear their share in their character of
consumers, and therefore the artificial excess, in the price of
bread, is a clear loss to others ; but the artificial excess in the
rent and price of land, is not a clear gain to them.'' — (p. 40.)

This is one way of puttinsT the case ; though a number of
items, as increase of poor-rates, &c. might be added to the
debtor side of the account. And the fair question to ask the
agricultural people is this ; — Suppose the manufacturers had
got a tax on home-grown corn (which would manifestly increase
the demand for their goods in exchange for corn from abroad),
would any of the corn-growers doubt Lord Milton's argument,
when it was applied the other way ?

But as was intimated before, the dishonest part of the corn-
growers are not bound to mind this. They think they have
got their hands into the manufacturer's pocket, and they mean
to keep them there. What is to be done therefore, is to point
out to the honest and sensible corn-grower, — the man whom
God has made with more wit than to be a plunderer without
examination of the probable consequences, — how and in what
way it is that Providence has brought about and provided, that
plunderers in this line like all others shall be but a short-sighted
generation, running their heads into a losing trade, to say
nothing of the knocks that may chance to them when two ho-
nest men come to set upon each one of their fraternity. And
the way is this. It may be conceded that the great aristocrats
who are born to the right of making us keep their children le-
gitimate and illegitimate, may profit by the Corn Laws in those
cases where the poor-rates do not increase faster than the value
of the produce ; because they have only to get more value for
the rents of a given estate, and inasmuch as their children must
at all haz?rds be found in certain incomes by the public, the
greater value is worth more to them in the end. But though a
common landlord may get a greater pecuniary value from his
estate, this will not save his soul alive if the difficulty of pro-

on the Corn Laws.

319

viding for and establishing his children is increased in a greater
degree at the same time. The whole country is in what Adam
Smith called the "stationary state/' in consequence of the pro-
hibition of manufiictures and commerce ; and of this the effects
fall upon all the landlords who are not of the porcelain clay
which must be maintained by other people, even where their
rents are not absolutely diminished by that increase of the
poor-rates, which heaven has tacked to the landlords' tails as
nature's check on their cupidity.

To that numerous class the farmers, and that still more nu-
merous one their labourers, there is in like manner no difficulty
in conceding, that the first effect of the Corn Laws was to make
merry times for farmers. But are times merry now? Is it
not plain that " bygones are bygones," and all that is left them
is a fearful waiting for the natural punishment on cruelty and
wrong ? The Corn Laws got up a spirt of prosperity for farmers
at their neighbours' expense, in tlfte same manner as a spirt of
prosperity for linen-drapers might be got up by an Act of Par-
liament that should prohibit the wearing of woollen coats. But
that was seventeen years ago. The only consequence now left
is, that there are perhaps five farmers where there would have
been four, and that the five are much worse off than the four.
If the five were as well off as the four, the farmers might plead
that it wonld be all clear loss to go back again. But they are
not ; they suffer under all the difference that arises from the
general state of the country being incomparably worse than
formerly. Their children cannot all be farmers ; and the Corn
Laws have brought on a state of things where they can be
nothing else. So sure as there is a Providence above, is it
written that there shall be always ways in which those who
wrong and defraud their neighbours shall in the end find out
that they have made a rueful bargain. Yet the men who are
thus robbing both agriculturists and manufacturers together,
teach their followers to cry, that the agricultural interest is to
be sacrificed to the manufacturing. The thief with his hand
in another's pocket, calls out that he is going to be wronged,
and that he is within an inch of being obliged to take it out.

These are some of the reasons why well-meaning and honest
men of the agricultural classes should at all events pause before
they decide that they have any powerful interest in supporting
the present barefaced robbery carried on against the community.
But for those who are neither well-meaning nor honest, there
are other reasons that perhaps may weigh. The robbed are
two to one ; and is there anything in all human experience to
lead to the supposition that they will bear the thing much
longer ? In struggles of this nature, the rule for the honest and

320

The Fall of the Constitution.

suffering part of the community, is exactly what it is in military
operations against a piratical tribe. If the pirates will come
to decent terms while they have any means of resistance left,
treat them generously, forget old grievances, and try to arrange
conditions which, while they secure you from the repetition of
the evil, shall also consult the comfort of the opponents. If
they will noty then, when you get the better, leave them not
an ounce of powder nor a fathom of rope ; eschew cruelty to
their persons, but in a political sense, cause the ploughshare to
pass over them and through them. This is the feeling at the
present moment ; and a revolution would be a cheap way, if
there was no other, for putting down the intolerable evil. There
must be universal suffrage, and will be, if nothing else will pre-
vent the two from being plundered by the one. If the agricul-
turists have sense or grace, they may make a composition now,
sufficient to secure all their honest interests. If they have not,
it will be a sign they are destined by Providence to receive the
just punishment of rogues in grain."

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1832.

Art. XVI. — 1. The Fall of the Constitution. Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine for July 1832.

2. Duties of the Conservative Party. Id.
"f^lTHEN a radical is weary and heavy-laden, — when he is

^ ^ bowed to the earth with a sense of his own infirmity or
that of others, — when he is sick of exhorting his neighbours, or
the hard-handed multitude will not move themselves aright, —
then is Blackwood's Magazine like water-springs in a dry ground,
or like the wondrous bone from which the prophet-warrior
drank, and his spirit came again and he revived. If a point
wants establishing, there it is ; if a fulcrum is desired for
another twist of the crow-bar which honest men have at last
got into the strong-hold of their adversaries, there it may be
looked for ; if an honest captain of the Reformation is at a
loss for something pithily conceived to put into the hands of
any Warts or Bullcalfs he may happen to be drilling, there is
his resource ; and if a leader of higher degree is anxious to
guide the movements of the masses upon the points where the
enemy feels sorest or lies most open in his quarters, there is
Blackwood like a large Cassini's map of the department, ready
to show him bridge and obstacle, and give him all reasonable
bases he can require for his strategy.

The constitution is fallen ; Blackwood says so, and he must
be right. It is very true. The abhorred thing which weighed
on us and on our fathers like an incubus,— the lubberly

The Fall of the Constitution,

321

Jaggernaut with his head of gold and his belly of brass, whose
feet of h'on and mud at once bedaubed and crushed us,— has
been stricken with a stone cut without hands, and is become
like the chaff of the summer threshing-tloors. Never was a
mass of human iniquity so tamely put down, after so much
pains to bluster and to threaten. History has no instance, of a
party so well prepared and organized, being walked off the field
by such a ragged regiment. For those who were most inte-
rested know best, how small was the organization, how feeble
the union, in short what a collection of stones out of the brook
in a shepherd's bag it was, that brought down the bullying
Goliath, and as the boy translated aMm^ n-iv^^J W kvtZ,
" made his halfpence rattle in his pocket." The cause of this
was simply one ; that though the assailants were not skilful,
they were many. Tiie Tories never dreamed how they were
hated, or knew to what a length had gone the demonstration,
that they were every man's natural enemies, whom he was bound
to quell when he was able, like vermin in his featherbed. And
what the people have done this year, it is hard if they could not
do the next, " or often er if need be." It is not strength that is
wanted, but guiding of the gully.

Hear what daelos y quebrantos — which was Don Quixote's
dish on Saturdays, and must in English have been
*' bubble-and-squeak" — are made about the sons of robbers
having lost their birthright. Men must have been sadly beaten,
when they ululate in this sort.

* If any rman had predicted sixteen years ago — &c. — it would have
been thought that the heaven itself wonld fall before such a change
could be accomplished. Yet we have lived to see all this come to pass.
Within the tapestried chamber which still recounts the destruction
of the Spanish Armada [the Holy Alliance of old tim''] ; under the roof
v/hich covered the hall of William Rufus \_Mrs. Ramsbottom *] ; close to
the sacred v»alls v/hich yet contain the bones of Edward the Confes-
sor \_will they cure an ague ; on the spot where Alfred \the honest
king] established, a thousand years ago, the foundation of the
monavchy [yjhich they made odious], the triumphant destroyer has
stood, and a peal of exultation broke from the Demons of wickedness
on earth and in hell, at the fall of the noblest monument of wisdom,
the firmest bulwark of virtue, that the blessing of God ever bestowed
upon a suffering w^ rld.' — Fall of the Constitution, p. 55.

Now who were the daBnions, why did they exult, and what
was it all about ? Nothing more or less, than honest men not
wishing to be plundered, and rejoicing over the probabihly that
they had done something towards preventing it in future ; — an

* See the clerical weekly organ the " John Bull," for the Letters of Mrs. Rams^
bottom. " William thence called Roofus.^^ — Added iu \S'6d.
VOL. II. X

322

The Fall of the Constitution,

exultation such as the pubhc feels when a knot of coiners or
receivers of stolen goods is broken in upon by the police. And
the " firmest bulwark of virtue,'' the noblest monument of
wisdom," what was it in the eyes of all except the concerned,
but the largest joint-stock company of public wrong, that was
ever got up in the annals of the world by bribing mdividuals
with the shilling to assist in taking the pound from the com-
munity? There is no wonder in anything men say for them-
selves if they think that they shall profit by it ; but it is won-
derful that any men should think it politic to say such things
as these, when the answer is so ready and so sure, and when
they know so well what the simple unsophisticated opinion is
they shall excite in the breasts of their opponents.

* Dreadful as has been the consternation, profound the grief, un-
measured the indignation, [of the losing party, or as they chuse to call
themselves] of all the wise and the good throutrhout the land at this
terrible revolution [Ther eh2i'S> been a terrible revolution for your enemies,
Mark that. You see what you can do when you chuse.'], it is not the
part of those who love their country, and are resolved to do their duty
to it while a plank of the vessel remains together, to give way either
to hopeless dejection or unmanly despair [Depend upon it, there will
be no hopeless dejection, while any man has a shilling left thnt can be
take?! from him]. There is a poiat of depression, says Mr. Hume, in
human affairs, from which the transition is necessarily to the better
[and so at last we have found it] ; and though the observation has been
repeated till it has become proverbial, it is in moments such as the
present that we alone feel its truth,' — Id.

Mr. Hume was certainly right, as he has often been
elsewhere ; and it is well to find the Tories speak of him re-
spectfully. The best scheme of plunder cannot last for ever ;
police-men will break through and steal, and moth and rust
corrupt the most strongly guarded hoard. All human things
are frail, and so is thieving. The enemy will get the upper
hand sometimes ; and the most the bravest can do in such cir-
cumstances, is to wait with pious patience for a turn of tide.

^ The fond wish of the patriot and the hero \meani71g their predt-
cessors] in so many past ages, Esto perpetua, is now no more. The
long glories of its steady and tranquil reign [Not so very tranquil ; it
has had heavy rubs before, in 1640 and 1688] ; the matchless celebrity
of its arts and its arms [ What were its arts ? its arms, it may be pre-
sumed^ were the people's^ ; the steady growth of its industry [as wool
grows under shearing] ; the dignified and majestic tenor of its admi-
nistration [the Speaker''s wig] ; the general freedom which it developed
[to the party of plunderers] ; the relief to suffering which it afforded
[in one place while it caused the double i?i another] ; the restraint to vice
which it occasioned [where the vice was against its interest] ; the re-
ligious institutions which it had created [to impose upon the people] —

The Fall of the Constitution,

323

all, all are lost. \_Strike up the song the shepherds heard, " Glory to
God in the highest, and on earth peace^ good will towards men I "] Hence-
forth the country is a mere democracy \_Remeinher that, and do your
duty^ ; the steadiness of the patrician sway [it was very steady^ is at
an end, and in its stead the vacillating and unstable rule of the mul-
titude is established.' — Id. p. 56.

There are things in this, some people did not know. It is
what the cockneys, — good men some of them, and have been,
since they eyeleted the royalists at Brentford in 1642, — call
*' refreshing." Heavy duties appear to have devolved upon
the people ; it is more necessary than ever, that they should
not forsake " the assembling of themselves together."

This prospect, which, to those who regard only the fate of their own
country, is fraught with such melancholy feelings, is the source of
very different emotions to those who contemplate the progress of the
human race. We have struggled long and resolutely to arrest the evil
[How kind] ; but the revolutionary spirit has prevailed [ Turn and turn
about, is only fair~\ ; the rock of Sisyphus &c. The work is finished.
Human madness and guilt have run their course [Men will not bear it
any longer] ; and the laws of nature are about to resume their immor-
tal reign. We are soon to witness the long period of national punish-
ment [Hear that, — any man who shall think of sewing his handkerchief
to the bottom of his pocket] — to see delusion expire under the pressure
of suffering and anarchy, sink under the fury it has excited, and am-
bition prostrated by the passions it had awakened. We are destined
to see a nation which neglected and despised all the choicest blessings
of Providence [They mean the debt and the corn laws], which ran riot
in the fulness of national prosperity [with grass in their stomachs when
they were dead], and was drunk with the intoxication of national
glory [and the chance of very little else], sink and suffer under the
worst instruments of the Divine vengeance, the lash of its own passions
and vices. With their own hands they have pulled down the ancient
and undecayed fabric which shehered their fathers, and the old time
before them — with their own hands they have written their sentence —
with their own lips they have pronounced their doom. It was in the
midst of the triumph of revolution, the riot of rejoicing, and the blaze
of illuminations, that the handwriting on the wall appeared to the
people of England ; and while they were celebrating, like the Assy-
rians of old, their triumph over an imaginary enemy, their empire
was taken from them and given to another people.' — Id.

Fine writing, fit for a candidate for deacon's orders ; and
wonderfully like the tone that makes schoolboys hope the
pudding next." Or it would suit Matthews's old Scotch lady ;
it has a metre. Poor Tories ! poor frozen-out Tories ! nobody
thought the foxes would wipe their eyes with iheir tails so
piteously. They were ill-used, they were ; it was a hnrd thing
' for naughty men to stick their hands into their pockets, and
say they should take no more, when they had been bred to it.
X 2

324

The Fall of the Constitution.

People were prepared for roaring and rage, but not for such a
whine. There is no withstanding such appeals to the Dii
Immortales; the Tory pathetic must move men and Mercury,
to compass their Restoration.

^ Dark and disastrous, however^ as is the future fate of the British
empire [only think of it], we, do not think its case hopeless, or that,
after having gone through the degradation, distraction, and suffering
which must follow the destruction of the Constitution, it may not yet
witness, in the decline of its days, some gleams of sunshine and pros-
perity. Xhe laws of nature have now come to aid the cause of order;
its usual suffering will attend the march of revolution [ What suffering f
Has not all the good that man enjoys^ come throttgh ivhat robbers call
revolution ^] ; When it is discovered that all the benefits pro-
mised from it are a mere delusion; the eyes of the nation

must be opened to the gross fraud which has been practiced upon them.
Then it wdl be discovered that the aristocratic interest [Think only, the
privilege of keeping the aristocrats], and the nomination [Pretty for

ro^/e/z"] boroughs, which supported their influence in the Lower
House, were the real bulwark which protected all the varied interests
of the country from the revolutionary tempest, and that every branch
of industry is less secure, every species of property is less valuable,
every enterprise is more hazardous, every disaster is more irre-
trievable, when its surges roll unbroken and unresisted into the legis-
lature.' — Id.

The surges rolling unbroken and unresisted upon Mrs.
Partington, for want of a bulwark of rotten boroughs to keep
them out!

^ The Constitution, indeed, is destroyed,' —

It is enough, if that shame be gone ; the rest is bluster. It
means to come back if it can ; which it shall be the business
of all good citizens to rear up children to prevent.

^ In commem.orating the fall of the Constitution, many reflections
naturally arise as to the causes hy which this vast change has been
brought about, the consequences to which it is likely to lead, and the
means of escape which still remain to the institutions and property of
the country.' — Id. p. 58.

The causes on the Tory side are mainly reduced to the error
of once giving way. It is the cause of all falls ; if London
Bridge could have kept out the first stroke of the pick-axe, the
old stop-water would have been there still. Also " the reduc-
tion of the duties on beer and ardent spirits,'' which gave the
people license to get drunk ; in which condition they never
voted for the Tories. " A furious and deceitful press —
naughty press, ugly press. " Fierce and menacing Political
Unions," of men able to take care of themselves, and meaning
to do it. " The rural population outnumbered by the urban ;

The Fall of the Constitution.

325

two-thirds of the inhabitants of Great Britain attached to the
cities," and consequently not interested in the flagrant rob-
bery of the Coin Laws. The extension of the power of
reading to almost all the youth of the lower orders." The "in-
fluence of forei<;n travelling upon our young men of all ranks."
These are the distresses of the " Conservative" party, the storms
that have crushed their gentle blossoms to the earth.

One thing is evident from all this, — that " Conservative"
means thieves trying to keep what they have got, and Revo-
lutionary" means the party that is taking it away from them.
It is time therefore there should be an end of affected horrors
of revolution ; we are all revolutionists, or all of us that are
honest. It is time the people everywhere should lay to heart,
how totally and entirely the cry of revolution is the whining of
men who cannot keep their dishonest gains ; how property, re-
ligion, order, in their mouths are only different instruments of
fraud, variety of skeleton keys and picklocks, of which each
may be tried where it seems likeliest to succeed.

Great light is thrown by the kindness of the enemy, on
another important point.

^ Ccetera quis nescit. The Whigs returned to office on the promise
of a creation of Peers to any extent to ensure the passing of the Bill,
and the Conservative Peers [^Always remember the definition of^^ Con-
servative^''], though amounting to a decided mojorify of the whole
House, retired to avoid the fatal exercise of the prerogative. The
best and bravest, the first and noblest subjects of the Crown, [u^ho
bought their seats in the House of Lords for five rotten boroughs a head,']
were driven into vohuitriry exile, to avoid the same destruction to the
Upper, which democratic ambition had effected to the Lower, House
of Parliament.' — Id. p. 73.

Here is the secret ; teach it to the corporals, and tell them to
explain it to every private in their squads. As long as the
people and the honest aristocracy will hold together, they can
make it necessary for the Crown to coerce the dishonest, either
by diluting the House of Peers with men of creditable origin,
or which comes to a certain degree to the same thing, by the
threat of doing it. The borough-mongering peers are in a cleft
stick ; they have been forced to withdraw, and the operation
may ue repeated on them toties quoties,l\\\ the country obtains
the object it will never lose sight of, an adjustment of the
House. The main difference between one course and the other,
is that the one must go by jumps. There must be a miniature
convulsion, a chicken revolution, every time the bad blood in
the House of Peers is to be brought to justice ; and it is impos-
sible, supposing things go on, that this should not in one way
or other bring about the smoother measure of adjustment.

326

The Fall of the Constitution.

The Constitution bein^ decidedly fallen, what are to be the
*' Duties of the Conservative party " afterwards ? The wasps'
nest being destroyed, blown up, and trampled on, what will be
the policy of the poor singed creatures that crawl about and try
to sting ?

' Every thing/ they say^ ' depends upon showing a bold front, sup-
porting each other by the mutual exhibition of strength, and exhaust-
ing the funds of the enemy. That is the material thing — Strong in
numbers, inexhaustible in abuse, indefatigable in activity, with sten-
torian lungs, brazen faces, and insatiable ambition, the Reformers are
extremely deficient in funds. They can assemble 20,000 or 30,000
persons perhaps upon some topic of great popular excitement; but try
them with a subscription^ and the nakedness of the land at once ap-
pears.' — Duties of Ihe Conservative Party. ^ p. 139.

There is truth in part of this. After being pillaged for fifty
years, the pillaged are likely enough to be "deficient in funds."
They must make up for it with what is not "funds." The revile-
ment of the Reformers is only natural ; it is what every man
must expect, who has been in the habit of allowing himself to
be plundered.

Their plans for getting possession of the nest again, are first,
to work upon the ignorance of such of "the meanest class of
householders" as they can persuade to think themselves inter-
ested in the robbery of the Corn Laws ; secondly, to try to
operate upon the trading and commercial interests, by offering
them separately a shilling through the medium of taking two
shillings from some of the others, and for these devil's wages
they hope the commercial interests will sell their souls and bodies
to the tempter ; thirdly, to take in none but Tory newspapers,
magazines, &c. and thereby threaten the others as the lieute-
nant of hussars did Hoby ; fourthly, to sign Declarations, that
the strength of their party being known, the honest men may
run away ; fifthly, to raise a joint fund to support " Conserva-
tive" candidates while there is a rag of plunder in the common
pouch ; and finally, which is the thing their enemies most thank
them for, —

' Finally, let the Conservative party universally and firmly act upon
the principle of withdrawing their business from all tradesrcen whom
they employ who do not support the Conservative candidate. In the
manufacturing cities, which depend on the export sale, this measure
may not have a very powerful effect ; but in the metropolis, in the
other great towns, and the small boroughs, it would have an incalcu-
lable effect. If universally and steadily acted upon, it would be decisive
of the fate of England.'' — Id. p. 143.

There was an agreement, an understanding, a compact be-

The Fall of the Constitution.

327

tween the sounder part of the aristocracy and what are called
the Radicals, that a trial should be given to the working of the
Reform Bill before any further innovation was demanded.
Those who supported that compact, are personally responsible
for not counselling a breach of its terms ; and therefore it is
time they should come forward, so far as in them lies, and say-
distinctly that the time is come, the casus foederis has arrived.
It has not been brought on by any act of the contracting party ;
for that would be foul play. Bat the common enemy through
his acknowledged organ, — the same through which he called
to arm against the people, and looked so silly when he found
there were two sides to play at that game, — has given out in
orders the execution of that particular tyranny which makes the
demand of the Ballot a necessary act of self-defence. It was
not written in the bond, that the Radicals were not to call for
the Ballot if the Tories chose to bring on the necessity. Here
is the necessity ; let every man take the printed passage last
given in his hand, and one and all demand the Ballot of their
candidates and of the government. When the *' respectable
classes,'' the '* higher orders," have anything to settle for them-
selves, they know vastly better than to expose themselves to the
personal inconvenience that may arise from voting without the
ballot. There is not a learned society nor a club-house that
does not employ it ; it is only when it is to be used for the pro-
tection of the industrious and the poor, that it becomes base,
ignoble, below the dignity of human nature, — on all other oc-
casions, it is the only thing that noblemen and gentlemen find
noble and genteel. Lord John Russell says he will call for the
ballot, if — Does he call for the ballot at his club, if— or does he
shelter himself under it rejoicing that he finds it there already?
A landlord in some part of the country has declared, that he
will not allow his tenants to be canvassed. Now just reflect, —
meditate for as long time as would soft-boil an egg, — on the gross
absurdity and stupidity in a country calling itself free, of allow-
ing the suffrage to men who are in such a state of slavery to
other men, that those other men will not allow ihem to he can-
vassed. Could not the West-Indians have votes given to a few
hundreds of their negroes ? with whippers-in, they might be
made to tell upon a sugar question. Here are many millions
of good and independent men who are to have no votes because
they fall below a certain pecuniary standard ; and here are cer-
tain other men who are to have votes because a certain sum
goes through them into the pockets of other men who wdll not
allow them to be canvassed. Can any man of common sense
go to bed under such drivelling, and not dream of the means of
mending it ? The people have only to will and to agree ; and

328

The Fall of the Comtiiution,

they have leaders, some of whom know a hawk from a handsaw.
It is true the Birminsjham Union has turned out a paper-money
hoax, — to make ten shilhngs worth the operative's five, and give
him eight. On the which let us thank God for the good it did
us, — and at one time it was a great deal, — and avoid the evil.
But the people of England can go on, without being at the mercy
of the bankers and master manufacturers. Therefore every
man that is not paid for beino- cheated, — The Ballot! Re-
memher that while you are talking, your wives and children are
starving, and the Tory aristocracy feeding their hounds upon
your rations.

Lastly, Return the Tories' policy on them thick and threefold,
where they happen to be in your power ; refuse to house their
corn, to card their wool ; are you heasts and vermin, that every-
thing is to he fair against you, and nothing in reply ? Neu-
tralize as much as possible their operations on the tradesmen,
by dealing with those who support the people with their
votes- Many a little makes a mickle," and the custom of
a hundred honest men may be as good on the whole as that
of one plunderer. Treat the Tory party everywhere, as those
whose nieat and drink it is to rob you and insult you after-
wards, whose riches are the pickings of your poverty, and of
whom the clothes ihey wear and the food they fatten on hav^
been squeezed out of the pockets of the industrious and the
poor. If they offer charity, throw it in their faces : the world
is past being robbed of the pound, by getting the shilling back
in flannel petticoats. Deal with your enemies as your enemies.
They know no scorn, like that of a man's belonging to the in-
dustrious classes; they bate you, despise you, curse you daily
in their cups. Make them feel the weight of your numbers
when you are able. There is all the difference in the world
between originating a sneaking, stercoraceous policy, and
making it recoil upon the authors. If the Devil pelts with
assafcetida, we must return him his missiles, and fight him with
his own stink. If you are afraid of your fingers, wrap it in this
leaf of Blackwood and so send it cleanly. Do all this and act
like men, and see how soon you will have your worst enemies
howling for the Ballot.

Programme to the Westminster Review for 1 January,
1833.

The elections, have carried Antwerp without assault. Poll
after poll was announced, and no relief To such distresses,
the stoutest heart must yield.

Will not the Whigs now protocolize a little in Portugal? Or

Report of Secret Committee on Bank Charter*

329

would it, perchance, be propagandism f What is the protest
^g^m^ipropagandism,hwi protesting against teaching men that
they ought not to steal ? " Hinder us from stealing if you can ;
but bar propagating your notions.^' Does the other side not
propagate ? Or has it not, in all countries, some choice detach-
ments whose limited office is to direct men's opinions towards
servility from their birth ?

The dispute in the American States appears to thicken.
Could not the parties agree to truck two wrongs, and be the
better by the sum ? The Northern States plunder the Southern
with their Tarif; the Southern States scandaHze the Northern
with their Slavery. Both go to reduce the name and credit of
America. No civilized nation, in these days, gives into the
savage blunder of making one half the citizens rob the other,
with a common loss besides; — they are all backing out. No
man in a civilized country, comes reeking from contact with
Slavery, and expects to sit down with gentlemen. Might not
a sensible statesman find a way to settle this ?

The Tories in Great Britain are defunct ; they cannot find
themselves or one another. There may be one in Libya ; or
in the remote parts of Australasia, where their weaker branches
have been located for various unexpired periods. But in
Great Britain, they are not to be had ; they are all vaccinated
into " Conservatives." There wants but one more purge to clear
them off; — the Ballot,

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1833.

Art. IV. — Report of the Secret Committee appointed to inquire into ike
Expediencij of renewing the Charter of the Bajik of England^ and
into the System on which Banks of Issue in England and Wales
are conducted ; and to whom the Petition <f certain Directors of
Joint Stock Banking Cmpanies in England was referred ; and
who were empowered to report the Minutes of Evidence taken before
them. — Atlas Newspaper. Krakea folio. Sept. 23, 1832.

HEN George the First or Second got into a heat with his
Minister, and insisted on being shown the documents re-
lating to a certain subject the next morning, the Minister
obeyed, and when the King rose he saw three large waggons
full of papers, parked beneath his window. Tradition says he
consented to \vrestle with the matter in an abstract. And so it
must be here ; for without it, there would be no better chance
of verifying the scriptural hyperbole, that the world itself could
not contain the books that should be written.

The first thing to be collected from this Abstract — for such it
is, notwithstanding its covering a surface of paper that may re-

330

Report of Secret

mind the spectator of the sea-monster '* fioatincr many a rood,'' —
is that on no one point, on which more or less information is
found in the Minutes of Evidence, is the information so com-
plete as to justify the Committee in giving a decided opinion*.
Nothing could convey a more modest statement of the conjunct
abilities of the Committee, or of the aptitude of similar combi-
nations for giving an opinion on anything. Imagine William
Cobbett directing thirty square feet of examination on half a
dozen points and their collaterals, and being finally unable to
"justify himself in giving a decided opinion on any one." His
opinion might be wrong after all ; and so might the Commit-
tee's. The miracle is not in the Committee's being unable to
secure itself from the possibility of being mistaken ; but in its
labouring under an incapacity to include in thirty square feet of
close brevier, the materials for committing itself to an opinion
at all. Every man has an opinion, or can make one in a quarter
of an hour, — a better in an hour, — a better still in a week, —
and one still more precious in a month. The Committee, from
the dates of the evidence, was sitting about three calendar
months ; it ought to have hatched, therefore, a three months'
opinion. But perhaps this is wrong ; under forms where
" nothing is but what is not," it may be etiquette that a Com-
mittee should not have an opinion ; it may be a fiction of law
or policy, that thirty-one members and a chairman cannot in
three months of incubation compass an opinion. It would be
putting new wine into old borrachas, to think upon these things
too deeply.

As long as the Bank of England pays in gold upon demand,
it is impossible for it to keep in circulation a depreciated paper ;
but all the value there can be in this, depends on the degree of
certainty that the Bank will continue to pay when people want
it. Now one objection raised to a limited and inconvertible
paper issued by the public for its own benefit, is that in case of
political alarm the consequences might be — nobody can tell
what. It becomes therefore of importance at all events to know,
whether under the existing state of things the public has any
greater security against this danger, whatever it may be. And
on this point, — though of course the Committee has been unable
to form any opinion thereon,— appears in the evidence of the
Governor of the Bank, the following oracular statement. —

^Against political alarm and political discredit the bank can never
guard itself. // makes no preparation against a political demand for
gold,''

* * On all these, and on some collateral points, more or less information will
be found in the Minutes of Evidence ; but on no one of them is it so complete as
to justify the Committee in giving a decided opinion.' — Re-sort.

Committee on Bank Charter.

331

From this, such men as can form opinions, may be permitted
to collect one fact ; — that the Bank habitually and systemati-
cally " makes no preparation," — that it does not pretend or pro-
fess that " it makes any preparation," but avows that it does
not,~for paying its paper in gold, in the event of anything
that may be represented by the terms "political alarm," "poli-
tical discredit," or political demand." It is something to know
this; for though the Committee of thirty- two could form no
opinion on it, other people will. And one branch of that opinion
will be, a conviction that against the consequences of " politi-
cal alarm," the Bank does not pretend to hold out any remedy,
but the moment the said "political alarm" arises, is prepared
to declare its insolvency and refuse to pay. So far as there is
any merit or importance in the notes being paid, we are doing
business with a declared insolvent ; we are taking the notes of
a banker who protests that he is not ready for a run, of the
only kind in which anybody cares a pin whether he is ready to
pay or not, — who avows that if such a run arrives, the clerks
have his printed orders beforehand (and here they are), to
shut up shop. All of which it is well the public should know,
if it is only for the sake of convincing themselves, that if they
were to issue a limited and inconvertible paper for their own
advantage, they would at all events lose nothing in compari-
son with the present paper which is issued for the advantage of
somebody else, and which differs from being inconvertible only
by the fact that it is convertible at all times except when people
may be anxious to convert. This declaration of the Governor of
the Bank, has weathered a point of immense importance in
favour of a limited inconvertible currency.

The same witness is stated to have been asked,

' According to your description of the principle upon which the
affairs of the bank are conducted, do not the directors of the Bank of
England possess the power of regulating the whole circulation of the
country ?'

To which the witness is represented to have answered,

* The bank are very desirous not to exercise any power, but to leave
the public to use the power which they possess of returning bank pa-
per for bullion. The bank has the power to extend or contract the circu-
lation) but the bank would never use that power; it would leave the
public to act upon the bank so as to produce the effect in the end.'

It may be a bold proceeding to tell the man at the helm he
does not box his compass aright ; but if there is no error either
in the Report or in the way of understanding it, the helm,sman
must certainly be mistaken if he means that the Bank has any

332

Beport of Secret

power to extend the circulation (in the proper sense of the
term), so long as it is under an ohligation to pay in gold upon
demand. It can prevent the circulation (gold and paper toge-
ther) from being ever reduced in quantity so as to cause the
five-pound note to he worth inoi^e than the gold in five sove-
reigns ; and if this is what it calls the povver of extension, it is
right. But if it means to take any merit to itself for not mul-
tiplying five-pound notes till they are worth less than the gold
in five sovereigns if it thinks, or designs to allow country
gentlemen to believe, that there is a yawning gulph where
five-pound notes would be only worth four sovereigns and a half,
and that the public is suspended over it in sim})le dependence
on the virtue of the Bank ; — then it is time to proclaim all this
to be a mistake, and to maintain stoutly that the Bank is
mystifying itself and country gentlemen, as much as the
philosopher of Rasselas who thought that the guidance of the
seasons was in his hands. The Bank may be virtuous above
measure ; but it must not be conceded that its virtue is the
bar to a deluge of paper, when all the merit is in the obligation
to pay.

Another point on which the Bank seems disposed to claim a
disputable credit, is on its nostrum for regulating its issues by
the foreign exchanges. Think only what superhuman genius !
what complex ingenuity ! The Bank regulates its issues by
the foreign exchanges ! who else could do anything so wonder-
ful ! what would become of us all if we had not the Bank to
regulate the issues by the foreign exchanges ! Whether the
directors of the Bank do or do not mean to represent themselves
as conjurors upon this point, must be settled by reference to
what they say.

^ The Bank of England is the only banking concern that, for pru-
dential reasons, puts any check or restraint upon its issues. Country
bankers give out notes iii full proportion fo the value of their securi-
ties. The Bank of England, however, is the only body that has
knowledge of the acturd state of foreign exchanges, and the only body
(of course) that can rej^ulate its issues on that principle. A demand
on the bank for gold to be exported is the only criterion of an unfavour-
able exchange, and the inward flow of gold is the only indubitable
proof that the exchanges are favourable.' — Evidence of the Governor of
the Bank.

Now what does all this, when put with the best side foremost,
amount to, but that the Bank does its utmost, like any other
bankers, to put out as many notes as will be kept in circulation
and no more ; and where is the extraordinary merit in that ?
When in consequence of the fluctuations of commercial or poli-

Committee on Bank Charter.

333

tical transactions, an increased demand for gold arises on the
continent, the Bank knows as well as a baby knows how to take
its fingers out of the fire, that this is not the moment to increase
its issues with any use ; because the value of gold on the conti-
nent being raised, there must to a certain extent be a run upon
the Bank for gold, for the purpose of employing it in the quarter
where it happens to be in request. And contrary wise, when it
foresees a glut or slack in the demand for gold on the conti-
nent, it is as sure as is a schoolboy that he may play when the
master is away, that this is the season when it may launch out
a little in the way of issues, without a prospect of their being
immediately brought back for gold. But all this is nothing
but what is common to man. A banker at Hull or Yarmouth
must directly or indirectly be called upon in exactly the same
way, whenever a fat skipper hears that gold will be a better
article at Hamburgh or Oporto than anything else in which he
can vest his venture ; and the opposite. If the Bank of Eng-
land by residing at the fountain-head of affairs has better
opportunities for being thus weather-wise than a country banker,
the only reasonable inference is, that it ought to make a corre-
sponding reduction in the bargain it makes with the public. On
this point therefore it is also of importance, that country gen-
tlemen should not run away with the idea that there is some
mystery connected with the imposing words " regulation by
the foreign exchanges," which the Bank alone is competent to
solve, and which in the absence of its scientific interference,
would set the ale running from all the barrels in the country,
or otherwise disturb the harmony of nature.

The Bank has stated distinctly, that by " an unfavourable
exchange" it means " a demand on the Bank for gold to be
exported ;" which is the simplest form under which the phseno-
menon presents itself The more complex form, is where it
shows itself in the guise of a diminution in the quantity of
francs (for instance) which will be named in an order of Messrs.
Hammersley on Paris, in return for ten sterling pounds paid
down in London in any way that is to Messrs. Hammersleys'
contentment ; and it is useful to traca this case to its connexion
with the other. The North-American land-voyagers fell in
with some tribes of Indians in the West, who called everything
of which they did not comprehend the mode of action, a
medicine, A compass was a prodigious medicine, and a
double-barrelled gun one greater still. In this sense the varia-
tion in the rate of exchange is to most people a medicine ; and the
consequence is, that there is no lack of persons willing to make
the most of the obscurity. The bankers' way of accounting for
it, is by referring it to the comparative abundance or scarcity of
bills drawn in one country upon another. It may be hard, as

334

Report of Secret

before, to stay a man in his own profession ; but still it must be
maintained, that this is not the cause, but only the concomi-
tant. Tiie effect does not arise from the multitude and rivalry
of bits of paper, but from the multitude and rivalry of the
snoods exported to the foreign country, by which alone they can.
finally be paid. Since every bill on a foreign country must be
paid — if it is paid at all — -by the transmission of commodities of
some kind, gold and silver included ; it follows that the amount of
the foreign currency which will be expressed in the bill in return
for a given amount of home currency, will depend on the amount
of foreign currency which can be procured in the foreign country
by the sale of the commodities purchaseable here with the home
currency received. If indeed an extraordinary number of per-
sons are wanting bills to be drawn on the foreign country at
the same time, tiiis is, so far as it goes, a sign that an increased
quantity of commodities will be sent to that foreign country,
and that consequently the prices of English commodities in the
foreign market are likely to fall ; and the tendency will be, to
make a prudent man write down a smaller quantity of foreign
currency in the order he will give on the foreign country
in return for the home currency received. But the rate falls
because there is the appearance of a great many commo-
dities being on the point of being sent, and not because there
are a great many bills ; and if from extraneous causes there
should be no fall in the prices of goods sent abroad after all, —
as, for example, if there should just then be an increase of
fancy for English goods abroad, — the rate of exchange will
not fall, and would even rise, if the prices of English goods
abroad should rise in defiance of the increase of quantity indi-
cated by the bills. To remove the scene, if a captain of dra-
goons in India has an allowance of 300/. a-year from his father
m England, payable quarterly in Lombard Street ; — the rupees
he will obtain for his quarterly bill on Lombard Street from an
Agent in India, will be equal to the number for which goods
purchaseable with 75/. in England can be sold in India, minus
the number that will cover all necessary risks, expenses, and
profits to the Agent. Hence, if an increase in the number of
similar demands on the Indian Agents is attended with a dimi-
nution in the rupees proffered, it is not because of the multipli-
cation of pieces of paper, but the multiplication of the goods which
must be brought out and sold, coute qui coute, in the Indian mar-
ket ; and if from extraneous causes an alteration'is taking place
in the demand for English goods in India, the value given for
bills on England will not be affected in proportion to the in-
crease of their own number simpliciter, but by the compound
result of this and the extraneous causes besides. And in like
manner if there are other persons in India possessed of rupees

Committee on Bank Charter.

335

which they wish to exchange for bills available in Lombard
Street, the Agents will in the first instance try to effect an
exchange on receiving a reasonable commission for the same,
by putting the bill of ^ who has money in Lombard Street and
wants rupees, into the hands of B who has rupees and wants
money in Lombard Street. But in so far as exchanges of this
kind are not effected,— then the number of pounds shilhngs
and pence which will appear in the bill on England that will be
given for a hundred rupees in India, will be equal to the num-
ber for which goods purchaseable with a hundred rupees in
India can be sold in England, with deduction as before. So
that if pains-taking residents in India find to their dismay,
that the rupee for which twenty years ago they could secure
thirty pence in Lombard Street, will now only produce them
twenty-one, — they may be certain that the effect does not arise
simply from the increased quantity of remittances from India,
which may or may not be greater than twenty years ago, but
the main part of the reason is in the diminished value of Indian
goods in England, through glut, discovery of other markets, or
change of fancy,— in other words in the fact that the goods pur-
chaseable in India with a silver rupee, would formerly clear thirty
pence in England besides the charges for Agency, and now not
more than twenty one. It is always good to root up a mystery,
and halloo the long-tailed things that start from beneath its
cover.

But there is another side of the quotation last made from the
Evidence, which is not the best, and requires further prying into.
What is meant by " country bankers giving out notes in full pro-
portion to the value of their securities" ? and is it intended to
assert that the Bank of England does anything different from
the others ? Here are two things placed in opposition to each
other. Here is the *'for prudential reasons, putting any check
or restraint tipon its issues,'' which is put forward as peculiar
to the wnse virgins of the Bank ; — and here is the " giving out
notes in full proportion to the value of their securities," which
is stated to be the practice of those foolish virgins the country
bankers.

Now qucere whether the conduct of both sets is not precisely
the same, and whether either can do any increased harm if they
would. How far is it true, that country bankers will always
*' give out notes in full proportion to the value of their securi-
ties " ? Every country banker knows that there is some ex-
perimental limit to the number of his notes the circulation
of his neighbourhood will bear, as for instance a hundred
thousand pounds. If then he was invited to lend another
fifty thousand pounds of his paper, on undeniable security
and good interest as for example five per cent ; — will he con-

336 Report of Secret Committee on Bank Charter.

sent or not ? It will depend upon circumstances. If be
lends the new fifty thousand pieces of paper, fifty thousand of
the old will come back for payment, and he must produce fifty
thousand sovereigns from some other quarter. Has he then
fifty thousand sovereigns somewhere else, which are only pav-
ing him, suppose, four per cent ? for if so, he may gain one
per cent by the change. And the same with the question of
discounting; except that the trouble of issuing and receiving
paper will be of greater comparative magnitude. But whether
the banker consents to lend or not, is a thing perfectly indiffe-
rent to the whole of the public except the borrower. Whether
he does it or not, will not cause a single note of his more or less
to remain in circulation. A.\\ that the banker can do, is to keep
his given quantity of notes employed to the most advantage that
from time to time may off'er, by letting them come in from
quarters that promise less. And all this is common to " The
Bank." As long as it intends to pay in gold upon demand, it
need not make the smallest conscience of not lending or dis-
counting to the utmost that it can persuade itself to do. The
public is perfectly willing to leave the matter in its hands ; and
will give it no credit for not doing harm where it cannot. If
the Bank pretends to put restraint on itself for public motives,
it will find few that it will convince. In the nautical proverb,
*' they may tell it to the marines, but the sailors will never
believe it.''

Many proofs are scattered through the evidence of the
various witnesses, of the rate at which the knowledge of
the principles of currency and a sense of its importance are
advancing. One Director of the Bank (G. W. Norman,
Esq.) positively states as one good effect that would arise
from the periodical publication of the Bank's aff'airs, " the
gradual growth of knowledge on the working of the currency
the ultimate consequence of which growth will be, to give us an
inconvertible currency under limitation,— dispersion of the
knowledge of the fact that the breach of such limitation is to be
put down like any other felony, forming the only efficacious se-
curity for its preservation. On the important question of the pro-
fits of " the Bank," — not meaning thereby the stones in Thread-
Needle Street, but the animated beings wherever they may be,
to whose use the profits are finally applied, — on the nature of
the bargain in short, whether good or evil, fair or unfair, under
which the personnel of the Bank lends its services to the pub-
lic, the information is very meagre ; and for this very reason the
Paul Pry of the public should apply himself to detect the mys-
tery. But on the great point formerly noticed, the information
is invaluable. Words can hardly measure the importance of
the avowal distinctly and unequivocally obtained, that whatever

Harmonics of the Violin,

337

obstacles, difBculties, or dangers the public may think it sees
in a system of limited but inconvertible paper, where in case
of panic or political alarm every man should be left to whistle
for his remedy, and in fact have no remedy but in submitting
to the temporary depreciation of the value of paper, or rise of
paper prices, which the stagnation of business consequeiit on
such alarm might bring with it ; — that whatever bugbears
a sagacious public may conjvire up for itself upon this point,
they form a precise and accurate representation of the pros-
pect which the same sagacious pubhc now pays the Bank
heavily for providing for it ; with the exacerbation only in the
latter case, of the apprehended evil being brought on with all
the concomitants of surprise, wonderment, alarm, and outcry of
treachery and fraud, instead of being as in the other case, re-
garded as a natural and indispensable phsenomenon, within the
open and honest contemplation of the public, and of which every
man had fully fathomed the origin and the consequences.

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1833.

AiiT. X. — Practical Rules for pr^oducing Harmonic Notes on the Violin,
uilh a Theoretical Explanation of the manner in which Musical
Notes, Natural and Harmonic, are produced by Vibrating Strings.
Composed and Arranged by an Amateur. — Bury St. Edmund's,
Oct. 1831. London ; Cramer, iVddison, and Beale, 201, Rfcgfint
Street. Music folio, pp. 13.

" f pHE exquisite manner in which Paganini has executed

^ such varied passages on the Violin by means of Har-
monics," has stirred up the dry bones of the practical musicians
to desire to know something of the rationale of their art. The
*' Amateur ' therefore is evidently to be thanked, who puts him-
self forward as the agent for dispersing information ; and all
observations on his work must be considered as directed by the
wish to advance the accomplishment of his design.

After a Preface commencing with the words quoted in the
last paragraph, the Amateur" proceeds to " Practical Rules
for producing Harmonic Notes," interspersed with examples
in the shape of well-known airs with a line of accompaniment
in harmonic notes ; and then proceeds to " an Account of the
Theory of the Vibrations of Musical Strings explaining the
production of Harmonic Notes on any Stringed Instrument."
The query upon which is, whether the " Theory" had not
better have preceded, as being the natural and practically effi-
cient key to the execution of the " Rules."

The whole theory or principle of finding and producing the
harmonic notes is in reality very simple, and such as might be

VOL. II. Y

338

Harmonics of the Violin,

communicated to any intelligent child in two or three short
lessons. If the author of the " Political Register" had been
born and bred a professional musician, (as among the possible
freaks of fortune why should he not?), he would have set the
liope of his family before him, and said.

My dear little Son,"
" You are to get your bread by playing on the violin. It will
therefore be exceedingly useful to you to l^now all that can be
known about the harmonic notes ; by which means you may
not only get your bread, but be able to secure its being well
buttered also. A violin-player is worth a great deal more,
when he knows all about the harmonic notes ; and in fact, since
the appearance of Paganini, the chances are, that a player who
does not know it, will he worth nothing at all."

*' Do you know what an aliquot part is ? I am sure you do
not. If ycu have a cake or an apple, and divide it equally
among your companions, whether they be two, three, four, or
any other number ; then the thing is said to be divided into
aliquot parts, — ' aliquot ' being a word in the old Latin lan-
guage meaning ' some certain number or other,' and imply-
ing here that the thing is divided into equal parts of * some
certain number or other.' But if you were to divide it among
the same so that their shares should not be all alike, — or if you
were to give each an equal piece, but there should be a piece
left after all which was not equal to one of the pieces you had
given away, but was greater or less, — then the thing would be
divided into parts, but not into aliquot parts. Now then, my
dear little son, you know what is meant by dividing a string
into aliquot parts."

" Tell me now, how you would begin to show me the different
places in which a string can be divided mio aliquot parts. You
would first show me the middle point, which divides it into
two equal parts. Then you would divide the string, with your
eye or with a pair of compasses, into three equal parts, and
show me the two points of division between them. Next you
would divide it in the same way into four equal parts, and
show me the three points of division. And so on, ioxfive, six,
seven, eight, and as many more as you liked to go on with.
These then, you would say, — both those I have made and those
I might make if I Hked, — are the points that divide the string
into aliquot parts. And if you pleased, you might mark them
by writing under each point of division the figure which shows
how many equal parts the string is divided into, — as for instance
a 2 under the point where the string is divided into two, a 3
under each of the points which divide it into three ; and so on.
And indeed it will be better that you should do this ; for then

Harmonics of the Violin,

339

you cannot help observing, that sometimes more figures than
one will fall on the same place, — as for instance when the string
is divided into four, one of the marks 4 will fall on the same
place as the division into 2 ; when it is divided into six, one of
the marks 6 will fall on the same place that was previously
marked 2, and two more on places that were marked 3 ; and
so on. All of which will be wanted another time/'

" Now if you touch the string gently with the finger at the
distance of any aliquot part from the bridge, (mind I said from
the bridge, not at any of the divisions into aliquot parts, but
at the distance of one of them from the bridge"^) j and at the
same time pull the string or draw the bow across between this
point and the bridge, you will see a curious thing. The string
will divide itself into all the aliquot parts of which the point
touched by the finger makes one, — into two, or into three, or
into four, as the case may be, — and every one of them will
move by itself, as if it was a little string held fast at the two
ends ; the sound produced being the same that would be made,
by pressing the string down to the neck at the point touched,
in the common way. If the divisions are few, as two or three,
this may be seen distinctly enough by the eye. But where this
is not the case, it may be shown to be the fact by laying a little
bit of paper on the string when it is sounded ; and if this is laid
on any of the points of division into aliquot parts, whether on
the one nearest the bridge or any of its fellows, it will lie still
and not be thrown off, but if it is laid anywhere else, it will be
thrown off" directly, which shows, that the points of division are
at rest, and the others are not."

" If you want to know how or why this curious thing takes
place, I will tell you as nearly as I can ; but remember I do
not pledge myself that this is the reason, but only that I think
it very likely to be the reason, and this principally because I
know no other way in which it can be brought about. And
this way is, that when one portion of the string is moving in
one direction, as for instance from me towards you, the next
portion of the string is moving at the same time in the contrary
direction, or from you to me ; and so with the other portions,
whatever their number may be. In this manner it seems
possible that the points of division should be kept at rest, and
in any other manner it seems to be not possible ; and there-
fore, since the fact is before us that the points of division
remain at rest, I conclude that it is in this way it takes

* A writer in a weekly paper has attacked the statement on this point in a
preceding article (on Gardiner's Music of Nature, Westminster Review for Octo-
ber )832. See p. 295 of the present Volume, Note); manifestly not takinjj time
to understand what was said,

Y 2

340

Harmonics of the Violin,

place. This is what the feelosofers would call an inference.
And because this sort of balance can only be kept up by
the portions of the string moving bockwards and forwards
(which the same sort of people call vibrating) in equal times or
with equal quickness, and this again cannot take place unless
the moving portions of the string are of equal length,— it fol-
lows that this sort of motion in parts or portions of the string,
can only take place when those parts or portions are of equal
length ; which seems to be the reason why the experiment will
only answer when the point touched is one that divides the
string into aliquot parts'^

*' But this is not all ; for there is a more curious thing still.
And that is, that if you touch the string at any other of the
points of division into aliquot parts, (by which I mean any other
than the point of division nearest to the bridge), the string will
divide itself in the self-same way, — always with the exception
(now mind the exception) of the cases in which the point touched
falls in with a point in some simpler mode of division that has
gone before. For instance, you remember observing, that when
the string was divided into four equal parts, one of the points
marked 4 fell on the same place as the division into 2. Touch-
ing the string therefore in this place, must make the same
sound it did before ; which is a different sound from that which
it makes when touched at the other two points of division into 4.
And in like manner in other cases. But when this agreement
with some simpler mode of division does not interfere, all the
points of division on being touched produce the same sound.
For example, if the division be into five equal parts, inas-
much as none of these will coincide with any of the simpler
modes of division, there must be four points in the string, any
one of which being touched will produce the same harmonic
sound."

** But if you want to know how and why this still more
curious thing takes place, I can only tell you in a roundabout
sort of way as before. If you divide the string, for example,
into five equal parts, and touch any of the four points of divi-
sion you chase, — you check and finally prevent the continuance
of any motion at the point touched, though at the same time
it would appear that the touching (which to make the experi-
ment answer, must be very light) is not enough to hinder the
shaking, or as the learned people call it the vibration, given at
one end, from being communicated past the point of touch. If
instead of touching the string lightly, you were to lay hold of
it with a pair of pincers, then the experiment would fail alto-
gether ; the reason of which may be concluded to be, because
the motion is prevented from being at all communicated beyond

Harmonics of the Violin,

341

the point laid hold of. In fact the art, — for there is an art in
everything, from scraping the grains olf a cob of Indian corn to
sounding a musical string, whatever the difference in use and
dignity of the two things may be, — appears to consist in touch-
ing the string in such a manner, and with such a degree of
pressure, as shall allow the motion given by pulling or bowing,
to be communicated past the finger, and yet shall check and
finally prevent the continuance of all motion, or as it was called
before vibration, that is not consistent with the point which is
touched remaining at rest. Now if you consider carefully, you
will see that the only way in which motion can go on and this
point remain at rest, is by the string's dividing itself into the
five equal portions, the movements of which shall balance each
other as before described. It does not indeed follow, that be-
cause the motion could go on in no other way, it must neces-
sarily go on in this ; but we have the evidence of fact that it
does go on in this, so there is something that makes it go on,
whether we know what it is or not ; and the knowledge of the
reasons why it could not go on in any other, is at all events very
useful to make us remember what the fact is that is finally
produced.''

" The next thing is to be able to tell what all the sounds
thus produced are. Now you remember that when you were a
very little boy, I showed you, that if you stop a string by pressing
it down hard in the middle you produce its Octave ; where the
two sounds (of the original string and its half) are such sounds
as are produced by a man and a child when they sing the same
tune together, but in very different pitches of voice ; — that if
instead of shortening the string in this manner by the half, you
shorten it by a third part, you produce the sound which musi-
cians have called the Fifth ; if you shorten it by a fourth part
you produce the Fourth; if by the fifth part, the Major Third;
if by the sixth part, the Minor Third ; with a great deal more
which it is not necessary to mention now ; — and I told you too,
that the intervals from one of these sounds to another were not
the same, or such as to allow of beginning on any you please
and making the others serve in the places they happen to fall
in, which is attempted to be done by what is called Tempera-
ment, a thing that you as a violin-player should hold in as much
scorn, as an invitation to cut off your two legs for the sake of
trying how pleasant it is to hop on wooden ones. If then you
want to know what sound any of the harmonics really is, you
have only to do this ;— Double the distance from the bridge to
the nearest of the points of division into aliquot parts, over and
over, till you get beyond the middle of the string ; and then
the harmonic will be the note thus arrived at, only raised by

342

Harmonics of the Violin,

as many octaves as there have been doubhngs. For example,
if you touch the thickest or G string of the violin so as to bring
out the harmonic at one-fifth of its length from the bridge, and
want to know what note this is, — doubling this length once
makes two-fifths of the whole string, and doubling it again
makes four-fifths, and four- fifths pressed down in the common
way make the Major Third or B ; therefore the harmonic pro-
duced is B two octaves higher than the B on the thickest string,
or the same sound as the first B on the thinnest or E string.
And in like manner in other cases.'*

The examination of all the diff'erent possible harmonic
notes might evidently be carried a long way ; and it would be
very useful to do it if you were intended for a trumpeter, for all
the notes on the Trumpet or Horn are harmonic notes. But for
playing on the violin, as much as is given above appears to be
sufficient. It will enable you to trace all the principal harmo-
nic sounds, and in fact all that on the violin are of any prac-
tical use ; for though there is no absolute end of the number of
harmonic notes, inasmuch as you may divide the string into a
hundred parts if you please, and then into a hundred and-one, —
yet after the division into five or into six, the sounds on thp
violin become so feeble as to be of no use except as matters
of experiment and curiosity. And it will have this further
good effect, that it will make you cease to marvel and to won-
der, at finding the harmonic sounds on the same string grow
sometimes deeper and sometimes shriller, as you move your
finger from the bridge towards the head, — as if there was some
mystery in it that anybody could not learn in half an hour
when they set about it properly."

*' Suppose now you could stop some tune (as for instance
* God save the King') on one string of the violin as for example
the fourth, with your first or second finger, and at the same
time always touch the stopped string gently with the little
finger of the same hand at one quarter of the way to the bridge
so as to bring out the harmonic note ; — is it not plain that you
would play the tune, only in the Double Octave, or two octaves
higher than if played by the simple stopping on the fourth
string? There is no doubt that this is very hard, especially
for a little boy ; it is almost as bad as playing on two violins at
once. But still the thing can be done. And if instead of
touching with the little finger at the quarter of the way to the
bridge, you should touch at the third, the fifth, or the sixth of
the way, you would bring out notes that w^ere not Double Oc-
taves to the sound that would be made by simply pressing
down the first finger, but other sounds, which you have it in
your power to calculate ; all of which might by possibility be

Harmonics of the Violin,

343

very useful, but the other was mentioned as being the simplest.
Harmonic notes of this kind may be called 6*/oppe6/ Harmonics,
as being produced on a stopped string ; while the others may
be called open Harmonics, as being produced on an open or
unstopped string. If you asked me what is the use of playing
anything in Double Octaves in this manner, or in any other of
the harmonic notes, — I should answer, First, because these
harmonic notes have a very fine and pure sound, — they do not
squall like the sounds made by pressing the strings to the
finger-board very near the bridge ; — Secondly, because it is
much easier to make the sounds in tune in this manner, than
by trying to make them by stopping near the bridge,— for where
the string is so short, the smallest error in the stopping becomes
sensible in proportion ; — Thirdly, because, (as it is not neces-
sary to be always playing in harmonics), they may be mixed
up with the common notes of the violin, and save an im-
mensity of trouble in jumping from one end of the instru-
ment to the other to find the high notes. Look, for instance,
at an old-fashioned fiddler playing on the second string, and
wanting (suppose) A in alto; and see what a leap he will
make to find it on the first string, and what a horrible screech
-he will bring out after all, when he might produce the note in
the most perfect tune and tone by only touching the second
open string that he is on already, harmonically at a fourth of
the way from the head to the bridge, or at the same place that
he would stop D on the second string."

In some such way as this, it is conceived it would be very
practicable to instil a theory of the harmonic notes, which should
be highly useful as a stepping-stone to ihe practice. After this,
the first proceeding would seem to be, to practise the pupil in
playing easy passages in the harmonic Double Octaves, to wit
by always touching harmonically at the quarter of the way to
the bridge ; — and then in the harmonic Octaves to the Fifth, by
touching at a third of the way to the bridge (in which, if his
fingers are too short for application in the commonest position
of the hand, he must practise in one of the positions nearer to
the bridge) ; — and after this, if chosen, in the harmonic Double
Octaves to the Major Third, by touching at a fifth part of the
way ; and subsequently, to go from one of these kinds of har-
monics to another, in any manner that may be deemed calcu-
lated either for practice or effect.

The author, in his " Practical Rules," writes a note (as for
instance the lowest G on the violin), and then a note (as low C)
above it, in the manner used for representing a chord ; his
meaning being that the string is to be touched harmonically
in the place which would stop the C, and thereby produce [not

344

Harmonics of the Violin.

C, but] Double Octave G ; and in the same way for the A, B,
&c. in succession. It would appear to be simpler, to indicate
once for all, that the desired notes are to be produced by touch-
ing the string always at the fourth part of the way from the first
finger to the bridge ; for this is the real principle on which the
thing is done, and the introducing the C at all is only an in-
cumbrance. Instead therefore of writing C in the manner of a
chord, a better way would have been to write the Double Octave
G, or as the music-masters call it G above the lines," and in
the same manner for the A, B, &c. that follow ; adding some
expression common to all, — as for instance the simple one of
drawing a slanting straight line that should lie always one-
fourth of the way from the lower set of notes towards the
upper, — to indicate that the upper set of notes are to be made
out of the lower, by always touching harmonically at one-
fourth of the way to the bridge. And in like manner in other
cases. Everything must have a beginning ; and there can be
no doubt that by the perseverance of different professors, babes
and sucklings will in a short time talk of the harmonic notes,
as familiarly as their playthings.

Answer to " an amateur."

{From the end of the same Number.)

The writer of the Article on Gardiner's Music of Nature in
the Westminster Review for Oct. 1832, will be glad to be the
agent of collecting and concentrating information on " the best
construction of the Violin,'' or other subjects connected with
the theory of sound, if any person interested in such pursuits
will forward it to him, or point out in what direction it may be
looked for with success. In the construction of stringed in-
struments, it is not clear that much has been done to determine
with precision the effects either of magnitude or form. The
forms theoretically connected with the phsenomena of sound,
are the paraboloid, and what may be called the parabolic
prism ; which, for small portions of the respective figures, do
not extensively differ from portions of the sphere and cyhnder.
The effect of removing the tail-piece in the violin, and its agree-
ment with the previous observations of Col. Macdonald, have
been noted in the same Article. The treatise of Col. Macdonald
further states, that advantage was derived from the use of a
bridge of box-wood ; but the writer of the Article on the Music
of Nature has tried various substances and forms for the bridge
of a guitar where the strings were fixed to the back of the in-
strument, as glass, steel, ivory, ebony, and fir, without finding
any remarkable difference. The diminution of sound caused
by the introduction of a tail-piece, might, he thinks, be estimated

Bp. of Bath and Wells on a General Commutation ^c. 345

at a seventh or eighth part ; which is probably as much as the
difference between a Cremona and a common violin.

The Article in the present Number on the Harmonics of the
Violin, was intended to be written in 'plain and very clear
language;^* and as such, may be agreeable to the Corre-
spondent.

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1833.

Art. XI. — Reflections upon Tithes, with a Plan for a General Commuta-
tion of the same. By George Henry Law, D.D. F.R.S. & F.A.S.
Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells. — London ; Rodwell, Rivington.
8vo. pp. 27. Oct. 1832.

A Reverend Father in God has come in with a flag of truce
^ on the subject of the Tithes. Let him be treated with the
best of everything ; that he may go away with a favourable
impression of the strength and good-humour of the side he came
to parley with.

* That Tithes, are at present an objectionable, and impolitic mode
of provision for the clergy, is a fact, very generally acknowledged, —
and deplored.'

Good. There is hope for the Church ; if she has been brought
to deplore.

* It is due however to the cause of truth, and justice, to observe,
that this circumstance has been in no degree occasioned, by the
Ministers of our Established Church, but, on the contrary, is by none
more deeply regretted, than it is by them.'

Not quite so certain. But a missive must not be sifted too
hardly ; he naturally speaks for moderate men like himself.
Nevertheless there are recollections, of those but for whose
raging, the Church might have been at this moment enjoying
herself in Wright's or Dessin's hotel, instead of being half
channel over in the very worst of weather.

^ The present system has been alleged to be unfair, inasmuch as
the amount of the vahie of Tithes is far greater now, than it was, at
the time of their first institution. Since that period the produce has
much increased from the increased expense and labour of cultivation.
According, therefore, to the industry and capital expended ou the
soil, is the sum now received by the owner of the Tithes : — a mode
oFpayment which, as it has formed the ground of animadversion, the
Ministers of our Church would naturally rejoice at seeing altered.'

' Hence, the demand of Tithe must have very frequently put a stop
to the increasing improvement of the soil. The public, consequently,
as well as the proprietors are losers by the system.' — p, 5.

346

Bishop of Bath and Wells on

It is pleasing, to receive these admissions from the hostile
side ;— at least to those who in their hearts seek only justice
and ensue it. This comes of political economy, and fighting
out the question with stout old mathematics, turning neither to
the right nor to the left for any man's interest or any man s
desires. When the Bishop of London appealed to radical organs
in the House of Lords and Lord King intimated his assent, —
it was clear that on the point of Tithes the game was finished,
and that there wanted nothing but well-meaning commis-
sioners from the two sides to meet, and settle the whole to
mutual advantage*.

* Since so much has been gained on this point by the union consequent on
standing upon mathematical truth, it is grief to see a vahiable Northern ally
bringing forward at this time the somewhat arn'eVee doctrine of Tithes being paid
by the consumer in the price of corn.

The observations on the extracts from Professor Senior (Tait's Edinburgh
Magazine, No. IX, p. 316;, appear fuunded on not distinguishing between a
partial (Mm\n\\i\on of prices (calculated elsewhere as amounting to fourpence a
quarter, and arising out of the accidental fact of there being a small belt of in-
ferior land that was kept out of cultivation by the tithe), and a diminution to
the amount produced by deducting the value of the whole lithe. It is easy to
confound these together; and it appears they have been confounded.

What Mr. vSenior has stated is, that if Tithes were removed tomorrow, there
vsrould be a fall of prices to a certain amount (say, for distinctness, fourpence a
quarter); but that this fall would only be teiiiporary, and those who expected
the consequence to be that corn should thenceforward to all time be fourpence
cheaper, would be disappointed. He has not said that it would not be a good,
as a dinner is a good ; but he has said that it is only one dinner however good,
and that a man will not go in the strength of that meat for ever. If he has
endeavoured unduly to depreciate the importance of one dinner, he is wrong j
but it is suspected the fact exists principally in the imagination of the com-
mentator.

The conclusion that if Tithes were removed, their value would be deducted
from the price of corn, may be traced altogether to defective and '* prse-posterous"
notions of the cause of price. The price of an article has no connexion what-
ever with the cost of production, except so far as the producers themselves
operate upon the price by bringing a greater or less quantity into the market.
If a man should bring corn into the market and declare with perfect truth that
every grain of it had cost him sixpence to produce by some unheard-of process,
he would not thereby persuade anybody to give him a penny more per quarter
than the price of vulgar corn. If a man should tind a vein of gold as easily dug
as coal, he would not get a penny less per ounce than for the gold whicli is
brought with great labour from Peru, as long as he did not pull down prices by
sensibly increasing the quantity in the market. The wants of men and the
necessity of dividing the existing stock, are what create prices; and the pro-
ducer, instead of creating prices, cuts them down by always bringing into the
market the largest quantity that will increase his individual gains.

If tithes were abolished tomorrow and rent also, it could not cause a given
quantity of corn to sell for less in the market than before; and therefore the
only consequence would be, that the tenant would be rent and tithe-owner, and
put both contentedly into his pocket. But the opponent will probably say, that
the fact of his pocketing these increased sums, would enable and induce him to
grow more corn. And here is the error. The corn grown now, is precisely the
maximum quantity which it is anybody's interest to grow ; and this maximum
will not be altered (except by the fourpenny matter so often mentioned) by
swallowing up both rent and tithe-owner in the tenant. To ask him to grow
"moft would be to ask him to grow an increased quantity of corn for a less
total Vetiii*" i and that he will not do. The mistake is in thinking, that be-

a General Commutation of Tithes,

347

* An act for facilitating a" Composition^'' for Tithes, and of a nature
somewhat similar* to that above-mentioned [Bishop Tomline's plan
of a Corn Rent], was brou^rht into Parliament, during the last
Session, by our most Rev. Metropolitan. By this measure it was
intended to be enacted, that an Incumbent, ^' with the consent of the
owners of two third parts in value of the Land subje<-t to Tithes,"
should appoint Commissioners, and make agreements for a Composi-
tion Money, to be charged for any term," which did not exceed twenty-
one years." But this Bill for Composition^ appears to be in one, and
that a most important point, far less eligible, than the Bill for Com-
mutation. By the latter Tithes are commuted, and without any pro-
spective alteration. By Composition the ascertainment of the value of
the Tithes, would be an evil continually recurring. Thus would all
those feelings be kept alive, which form the ground of dissention be-
tween the Clergyman and his Parishioners, and tend to diminish his
means of doing good among them.' — p. 9.

And thus also, which is as important as the other, would be
virtually secured the continuance of that pressure upon agri-
culture, which it is one of the first objects of a Commutation of
Tithes to remove. All struggles for prospective valuations,
are struggles for indirectly preserving the right of condemning
a belt of inferior land to sterility, and preventing the application
of a portion of culture to the rest. It is very agreeable, there-
fore, to find the present parlementaire distinctly giving up this
point.

Corn-Rents and temporary commutations being thus dis-
posed of, the author proceeds

* to propose that mode of remuneration for the Clergy, which,
after a long and anxious consideration of the subject, appears to
himself to be the most secure, the most unvarying, and, in every
point of view, the least objectionable plan, for a general Commutation

cause the tenant is to have more money, he will grow more corn. And its found-
ation lies, in the want of clear ideas of what it is that stops the increase of corn
where it does, under the existing system. If the tenant should find some morn-
ing, that his landlord had died and left him the estate, or a lay tithe-owner the
tithe, would he set about growing more corn on the land in consequence ? Not
a grain ; except, in the case where he became owner of the tithe, the quantity
christened four penny .^^ And the same answer may be made to the plea, that
though the remission of tithe on one farm might enable the owner of the land to
add to his rent, the remission on all farms would not. It would not be anybody's
interest to grow a grain more corn than before j — excepting the ^\fuurpenny.^*

The argument from the price of corn in a new country, is only, as before, a
mistaking of the rise of price consequent on the operation of tithe upon the land
kept out of cultivation by it, for a rise equal to the value of the tithe on the whole
land which then or at any future time becomes exposed to its operation.

By " ultra-Maithusianism" and Malthusianism run mad," is supposed to be
meant the disposition to disparage certain advantages on the ground of their
being temporary ; as if human life was not made up of the accumulation of
such. This tendency has been commented on in the case of one of the authors
mentioned in the article from Edinburgh (Westminster Review for July 1832,
Art. I. See p, 195 of the present Volume) j and is not known to be attributable
to any of the others.

348

Bishop of Bath and Wells on

of Tithes. And this is — by a Commutation in Land : the arguments
for, and against which, he will now proceed to consider.'

* In the first place, then, an allotment of land in lieu of Tithes,
would at once put an end to all those adverse interests and feelings,
which so frequently occasion a collision between the Clergyman and
his flock. Whether the rent be paid to the Clergyman, or to any
other Proprietor, can make no sort of difference to the parishioners :
except, indeed, that terms, somewhat more moderate, might be
expected, and would probably be obtained, in the one case, rather
than in the other. Experience, we think, without any charge of par-
tiality, would bear us out in this assertion.'

* In the next place, Land, in a great degree, regulates the price of
all things else. According to the amount of land possessed by any
one, is the relative place which he maintains in the ranks of society.
Ages, after ages, may roll away ; whilst the Lord of the soil still
continues to retain his pristine influence and station. Thus, the pro-
prietor of the Church Allotment also, would, amidst all the changes
of time and circumstances, be equally enabled to preserve his relative
condition in the Community, and to throw around his family all
those means of respectability, those proprieties of appearance, which
the due upholding of the Clerical character so obviously requires.
The parishioners moreover would look up with increased respect to a
Clerical Proprietor of the soil, who lived among, and had the means
of letting land, and dispensing favours to them. Thus, might in-
dustry be rewarded, and merit brought forward. Thus might the
preacher of the Gospel illustrate, by his life, the precepts he delivers;
and prove himself to be, both in word and deed — a Father to his
People.'

' That a chan<?e of such national magnitude and importance, could
not be accomplished without very considerable difficulties and objec-
tions, is what every one at ail conversant with statistical subjects
must be naturally led to expect. The obstacles however which pre-
sent themselves, are by no means insurmountable. One, among
others, which has been most strongly urged, is, the throwing so large
a quantity of land into mortmain. But a greater degree of weight
has been given to this objection, than what, in fairness of reasoning,
it is justly entitled to. The main, indeed the sole object of the
Legislature on this point should be, to provide, that the earth be
rendered as productive, as, in its nature, it is capable of being made.
The intention of the Mortmain Act was, to prevent the Clergy from
availing themselves of the superstitious feelings of the people, and
thus too much augmenting the revenues and power of the Church.
This principle however, would in no degree be infringed upon, by the
adoption of the proposed plan. Neither can any fair argument be
raised, against land being vested in the hands of Churchmen, wbich
might not, with equal weight be advanced, against its being accu-
mulated in the hands of any lay proprietors.'—/?. 10.

It is possible that in a stage of society where the division
into landlord and farmer was less distinct than at present, loss

a General Commutation of Tithes,

349

and evil might arise from land accumulating in the hands of
parties who are likely to cultivate it carelessly or imperfectly.
But since the improvements given to the invention of tenants,
it may be suspected that the outcry about mortmain is a tink-
ling cymbal. The Fellows of a College, for example, may not
be as keen landlords as devised the Board of Agriculture, But
what follows, but that their tenants have the benefit ? It would
be found on inquiry, that a college farm is a thing quite worth
handing from father to son ; which does away with the possible
objection, that tenants not looked after will exhaust the land.
A landlord may exhaust the land, if he likes ; and why should
such a tenant do it any more than a landlord? Before, there-
fore, it can be shown that mortmain of this kind causes any
general damage, it must be proved that the tenants of the mort-
main are to be inferior in knowledge and conduct to other ma-
nagers of land.

* Another objection has been brought forward, from the supposed
difficulty of procuring a sufficient quantity of land in each parish, in
exchange for the Tithe. That in some parishes this obstacle would
exist, there can be no doubt. The fact however is, that the want of
land has never yet formed any bar to a Commutation, whenever this
mode has been agreed upon by the legislature. Where however, laud
cannot immediately be procured, the amount of the sale of Tithes
might, in the mean time, be invested in the funds, and the interest of
the same paid, by his Majesty's Commissioners, to each Parochial
Minister,'

^ Neither is it at all necessary, that the land to be purchased should
be confined to the parish itself. One thing only appears to be requi-
site, that a sufficient quantity of Glebe be procured, for the conveni-
ence and cultivation of the Parochial Incumbent. The main purchase
might, without much, inconvenience, be situated at some little dis-
tance from the parish.'

^ The real value of the Tithes would, we doubt not, amount to a
sum, far exceeding the computation at which thej'^ are generally esti-
mated. But nothing unreasonable would, we have just grounds to
believe, be expected by the Clergy. With much greater pleasure
would they receive a smaller remuneradon, cneerfuUy paid, rather
than a much larger amount, advanced unwillingly, and with discon-
tent.'—/?. 13.

' In the last place, it may be objected that the proposed Commuta-
tion will not be acceded to by the Proprietors of land. The answer,
however, is clear and conclusive. The Proprietors of estates will be
determined in their accept;mce or rejection of the terms proposed, by
motives of self-interest, and by those alone. Now the amount which
they would yearly save, i)y the non-payment of Tithes, would cer-
tainly exceed in value the annual rent of that proportion of their
estates, which they might deem it advisable to sell, for the redemption
of their Tithes. On this point, therefore, independently of all other

350 Bp. of Bath and Wells on a General Commutation ^c.

considerations, there can be little doubt as to the ultimate decision of
the Land Proprietors.' — p. 21.

This appears to be a correct abstract of the Bishop's proposal.
It may be considered as identical, as far as it goes, with Pro-
fessor Senior's ; though that contains further details on the
mode in which the management of such lands might be ad-
vantageously conducted*.

All this seems perfectly fair and well-meant; and ought to
be met in a similar spirit. There is no fraud visible in it, above,
below, nor between the folds. In this way there is no doubt
that the economical as well as the moral evils arising from the
peculiar form in which the provision for the Church is levied,
might be done away and leave a surplus of pecuniary profit to
be divided among the parties concerned. On a rough estimate,
25,000^, a-year has been stated as what the landlords and the
church might divide between them if they could agree ; and
475,000/. a-year among the consumers besides, till they take it
out in population f. Without standing on the exact amount, it
is clear there are advantages of both these kinds to be made
upon the spot. And the idea of refusing to accede to a pro-
posed abatement of an acknowledged evil, on pretence of at
some future lime being enabled to effect the removal of a
greater, — is one to be utterly scouted, or at all events turned
over to that extremest coda of Radicalism, which is always
found wriggling in every direction that it should not. The test
of a good Reformer, is that he is one that will reform when he
may. If the opposite side gains by getting rid of its 'ra ffcc&^k
or rotten parts, he gains by the tendency which one reformation
carried, has to make footing for another ; and the mean resultant,
is the public good from the point conceded.

The same advantages might be obtained by vesting the com-
mutation-money in other ways than land ; as for instance in
the funds. But the truth is, that the fundholders want prop-
ping and not weakening, and would not at this moment think
themselves strengthened, by having the Church put into the
same boat.

After the symptoms that have appeared, the commutation of
Tithes may be considered as a thing settled. Within a year or
two, the landlords will be sending a deputation to state their
sufferings from the Corn Law^s ; and in a little more, it is pro-
bable the West-Indians will be twitting the government with the
tardiness of its measures for relieving them from the existence

* See Westminster Review for April 1832, Art. 8, on Improvement of Condition
of the Clergy. Page 93 of the present Volume.

t Id. Page 86 of the present Volume.

Col. Torrens's Letters on Commercial Policy. 351

of Slavery. Cosi fantutti ; and the inference from it is, that
it is time to be prepared with a system of moderation and fair-
dealing, and bring that kind of spirit to the fore, with which a
failing side can decently negotiate. There is often one victory
in the field, and another after. As for the sackers, the clean
work makers, the " booty and beauty " men, if such there be,
they must be kept in their quarters by those that know how to
handle them. Besides, are they not all our brothers, and those
whom God has given to be bound up with us in one compact
of good or evil fortune. Beat them, when it is necessary for
the common welfare; but do not beat them and eat them
afterwards.

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1833.

Art. XII. — Letters on Commercial and Financial Policy. Bv Colonel
Toirens.— Bolton Chronicle.— Globe, Oct. 8, 15, 22, 29 ; Nov. 6.

npHESE are a series of papers addressed to the electors and
inhabitants of Bolton, on " the means of relieving the dis-
tress of the people, and of giving a renewed impulse to the pros-
perity of the country;" weighty objects in whatever manner
pursued, and glorious if well. And for further explanation the
question is stated to be, " How can the Reform Bill be made to
work well for the people ? What measures should the reformed
parliament adopt, in order to remove the pressure upon in-
dustry, to raise the wages of labour, and to increase the profits
of trade ?"

' There are two, and only two ways in which the comforts of the
great body of the i)eople can be increased. They are, the reduction
of taxation and the improvement of trade. I propose to consider
both. On the present occasion, however, I shall confine myself to a
simple statement of those principles of commercal policy, by the
adoption of which trade may be improved. The proofs and illus-
trations of these principles, together with my views upon the most
effectual mode of relieving industry from the pressure of taxation, I
shall reserve for subsequent communications.'

' Improvement of trade implies that more goods can be sold, at
prices more remunerating. But is it practicable, by any legislative
enactment, to extend demand and to enhance prices ? I contend that
it is. I am prepared to prove that the quantity and the value of
British goods vended in foreign markets will increase or diminish as
our commercial policy is regulated upon correct or upon erroneous
principles. What then are the principles of commercial policy on
the adoption of which the prosperity of the country depends ? They
are simply these. To lower the duties of customs upon the importation
of goods produced in countries which consent to receive British goods upon

352

Col. Torrens's Letters

terms equally favourahle ; and to prohibit, or to lay heavy duties upon,
the importation of goods produced in countries ivhich prohibit or lay
heavy duties upon British goods,'' — Letter I.

This is a statement of the proposition in debate, that cannot
be mistaken. It is not a representation that it might be poUtic
to hold out the offer of a reduction of duties on foreign goods as
an inducement to the foreigner to reduce his duties on English,
and so endeavour to work upon his selfish feelings to persuade
him to consent to increase the common good at two ends instead
of one ; but it is a representation that there is a loss incurred
through our merchants trading freely with such foreign countries
as in the existing state of the laws of foreign countries they
would fix upon, and that this loss maybe prevented by our own
government's laying a fine upon the act of trading with such
countries as in its wisdom it shall specify. The object, public
gain ; the means, preventing our merchants from selling and
buying in certain places where they know by experiment they
make a more gainful market, and forcing them to sell and buy
in places where they know by experiment they make a less,

*The facts formerly asserted and now to be established are — That
the errors of the government, in departing from the fundamental
principles of commercial policy, have deprived the country of the
advantages which our manufacturing superiority would otherwise
have secured ; have lowered the value of British goods in foreign
markets ; and mainly contributed to produce the distressing fall
which has been experienced in prices, in profits, and in wages. I
proceed m the first place to prove the princijtles.'

* Portugal receives British goods in payment for her wines ; and con-
sequently, the greater the quantity of Portuguese wine consumed in the
British market, the greater the demand for British goods in the Por-
tuguese markets. France prohibits British fabrics; and, therefore,
increasing the quantity of French wine consumt^d in England does
not extend the demand for British goods in France, but causes a
larger amount ia the precious metals to be sent from this to that
country. To increase the consumption of Portuguese wines, is to
increase the consumption of British manufactures ; to increase the
consumption of French wines, is to diminibii the supply of gold, and
to occasion a general fall in prices. It must, therefore, be the obvious
policy of this country to cause the wines of Portugal to be consumed
in preference to those of France, by iayinj^ li^ht duties uj^on the for-
mer, and by imposing upon the latter the highest scale of duties
which the intervention of the smuggler will admit.' — Letter 11.

The inference from so much might be, that the argument
was intended to be rested on a currency fallacy ; and to that in
the end it appears to return, though it diverges by the way. In
any other light, to diminish the quantity of gold at home
because it is the interest of traders to send it abroad rather

on Commercial Policy,

353

than keep \% at home, — in other words, because it is worth more
abroad than it is at home, — is not a source of impoverishment
but of wealth, as much as it would be in the case of coffee, or
of anv other forei<2^n produce. It would be very absurd to talk
of prohibiting a trade to Russia in Mocha coffee, by way of
penning up coffee at home, and thereby enriching the nation
through serving the interest of coffee-drinkers. And the reason
is, that it will either penn up nothing, or nothing that will not
be bought for more than it is worth. Either coffee will be im-
ported in quantity increased by the amount of the export,
within an insensible difference either in quantity or price ; or
if there is a small increase of price, and a small falling short of
this quantity, it will only be in consequence of the fact that
more is got on the whole by the new s^tate of things than by
the old. But if it was urged that gold was in different circum-
stances from coffee, inasmuch as it is the common medium of
exchange, — then this would be a currency fallacy. Nobody,
except old debtors, has any interest against a fall of prices aris-
ing from an increase in the value of gold ; and this interest is
balanced in the aggregate, by the counter interest of the creditors.
And, what is important to be added, the variation is exceedingly
small upon the whole, and no greater than must take place in
poflfee or any other named thing, through the ordinary course
of commercial speculations. Not an atom of any mentionable
substance can be sent out of the country, without proportion-
ally raising the value of what remains ; the inference therefore
ought to be, that not an atom of any mentionable substance
should be allowed to go out of the country. On the wages of
labour too, an effect is produced by diminishing the quantity of
gold and raising its value ; which is in favour of the w^orking
classes, on the ground that the odds are that their wages do
not fall in nominal amount as fast as the intrinsic value rises, —
in the same manner that a depreciation in the value of money is
against them. Trade therefore is to be stopped, and the loss
of its substantial profits incurred, lest an insensible tiuctuation,
which in the aggregate amounts to nothing, should take place
in the value of such pre-arranged bargains as are expressed in
gold. Exactly the same reason might be urged, for preventing
the fluctuations that might take place in the value of bargains
made for coffee.

But, as was stated, this does not seem to be further insisted
on in this place ; though there is a return to it in the end.

" No !" say the iiHra advocates of free trade, the foreign demand
for British goods is increased by the consumption of French wines full
as much as by the consumption of those of Portugal; because, as
France will not give us her wines for nothing, when we import a greater

VOL. II. Z

354

Col. Torrens's Letters

quantity of them, we must export a greater quantity of our fabrics in
order to purchase the greater quantity of gold required by France in
payment."

* On the correctness or incorrectness of this doctrine of the ultra
free traders, the whole question of reciprocity turns. It will, therefore,
be necessary to bestow upon it the most careful examination,'

' To make the question clear and distinct, let us suppose, in the first
instance, that in our commercial intercourse with Portugal the imports
of wine, and the exports of cloth, each amount to a million sterling;
and let us assume that, subsequently, our trade with Portugal is sus-
pended, and that, in consequence, we import an additional quantity
of French wine to the amount of a million sterling, and send the cloth,
which had formerly paid for the Portuguese wine, to South America,
in order to purchase a million sterling in the precious metals with
which to purchase the French wine.'

* The question now to be determined is this : — Will the cloth which
was worth a million sterling when sent to Portugal to pay for wme,
continue to be worth a million sterling when sent to South America
to purchase an additional quantity of gold ? If the cloth, when sent
to South America for this purpose, continues to be worth a million
sterling, we must admit that it makes no difference, with respect to
the extent of the demand for British goods in the foreign market,
whether we import wine from Portugal in exchange for British goods,
or from France in exchange for gold purchased with British goods.
But if, on the other hand, it shall appear that, when the cloth is sent
to South America to purchase additional supplies of the precious
metals, it ceases to be worth the million sterling which it was worth
when sent to Portugal to pay for wine, then it will become self-evident
that the doctrine of the ultra free traders is erroneous, and that the
principles of commercial policy which I have propounded are correct.'
— Letter II.

Now the possibility of the answer being favourable to the
querist, depends entirely on the supposition that the merchants
will voluntarily send the cloth to South America instead of
Portugal, when less is finally to be had by sending it to
South America. Upon the assuiDption of this, is founded the
whole possibility of the interference of the government being
of any use. If it be true that more is to be had by sending the
cloth to Portugal, what occasion is there for the interference of
the government ? unless it can be satisfactorily proved, that
the merchants have an innate substantial propensity to prefer
the smaller gain to the greater. If it is tiot true, then the inter -
ference of government is directed only to force merchants to
take the smaller gain instead of the greater, and as the school-
men say, cadit qucestio. See therefore whether it is at all
proved in the sequel, that merchants have such a propensity as
described.

When England exchanged cloth with Portugal for wine, the con-

on Commercial Policy*

355

suraers in South America took off as great a quantity of British cloth
as they were able and willing to purchase at the then existing prices.
What can now render them able and willing to purchase a ijreater
quantity ? Nothing but a reduction of price. The South American
market having been previously supplied with British goods to the full
extent of the demand, an additional supply is introduced, and a de-
clension uf price is the necessary consequence ; thus, then, it appears,
with the fullest evidence, that by ceasing to purchase wine from
Portugal with cloth, and pressing an additional supply of goods upon
the South American market in order to procure gold to pay for the
wines of France — it appears, I say, with the fullest evidence, that by
this alteration in the course of foreign trade, the produce of any g.ven
quantity of British labour is made to command a less quantity of
gold ; the value of gold, in relation to all home-made commodities,
is raised, or in other words, the price of British goods is reduced.' —
Letter HI.

The weakness in this, is in taking for granted without a
shadow of proof, and contrary to all the expei'ience of Christian
men on such points, that the merchants will go to South Ame-
rica with their cloth at all, if the result is to be that they are to
get less for it in the end than they might have got by taking it
to Portugal, it is like saying, " For heaven's sake fine a man
for going to sell his goods on the Surrey side ; for if not, he will go
and sell for sixpence, what he might have got a shilling for in
Westminster." The whole inference that the merchants will go
to South America and lose, is based on the unproved assumption
that they will go to South America if they are to lose by it.
And conversely, the whole inference that a gain is to be made
by preventing the merchants from sending their cloth to South
America, and forcing them by a fine to send it to Portugal
instead, is founded on the parallel assumption, that the mer-
chants cannot see though the government can, that they are
sending cloth to South America at a loss, through mere stu-
pidity m not sending it to Portugal without force, or in spite of
force, instead.

If a man was to make these two assumptions without the
question being involved in the mystical phrases of "recipro-
city" and " free trade," it is not too much to predicate of him,
that as the Chinese quaintly said to the Koutou'' embassy,
" his success would be small.*' Till it is pointed out by what de-
lusion or infirmity the merchants are practically to mistake
the greater gain for the less and the less for the greater,
there appears no substantial reason why the inference so simple
and cogent from this source, is to give way to any collection of
arguments of greater surface and inferior concentration.

* The ultra advocates of freedom of trade may, and I belitve do,
contend, ^' that in purchai>ing French wine with gold, instead oi

z 2

356

Col. Torrens's Letters

Portuguese wine with cloth, it is not necessary to press an extra
jiUpply of British goods upon the countries of the miners in order to
obtain an additional amount of the precious metals. The process by
which England obtains the means of purchasing French wines may be
as follows : — The gold and silver obtained by France in payment for
wine cannot continue to accumulate there — it will raise prices in the
French markets, will there check export and encourage import, and
then pass off to some other country, say Germany, in payment for
the foreign goods for which it creates an additional demand. As Ger-
many thus receives the gold and silver paid by England to France for
wines, in Germany prices will rise, export will be checked, and import
will be encouraged ; and in Germany, therefore, England will find an
extended foreign demand, and will receive back again from thence, in
payment for the increased quantity of goods exported, the specie drawn
from her by France." — Letter III.

It is not known who the advocates are that advanced this.
What has been advanced is conceived to have been the much
more powerful representation, that all zeal in the government
to prevent the merchants from purchasing French wine with
cloth through the intervention of gold, instead of Portuguese
wine with cloth directly, to their hurt, — is like the zeal of the
serving-man who carried his mistress's ducks across the water
by the necks for fear of drowning, and choked them in the
passage.

The way referred to in the sequel, by which the increase of
wealth is to be produced from the proposed prohibition, is
through this country's being the entre'pot of the precious metals.
The merchants therefore are to come and say to the govern-
ment, " We have looked into our books, and diligently exami-
ned all the items, and beg to state that by carrying out cloth
to South America we can make a profit, and pay our debts, and
give our manufacturers wages, and continue them in employ-
ment, and all go on thriving together ; and by carrying the cloth
to Portugal we cannot make our own again, and must leave our
debts unsettled, and turn off our workmen because we cannot
pay them any longer, and all go into the gazette in a body, —
or if it is not so bad as this, there is at all events an approach to
it, and we pledge our character for knowing a sixpence from a
shilling, to the fact that we and all that depend upon us down
to the boy that holds a candle, are (errors excepted, and so far
as we are judges of the matter) vastly better off by taking the
cloth to South America than to Portugal ; and we beg leave to
assure your Honourable Board, that if we did not think so, WB
would beg in all humihty to be allowed to go to Portugal
instead. We know that by going to South America we shall
bring down the price of gold with reference to cloth ; but we
aisure you upon our honours, that we will not send a yard of

on Commercial Policy,

357

cloth to South America, longer than the gold we get for it can
be turned into French wine that will sell for more than the
wine we should get for our cloth in Portugal. We are sensi-
ble of the kind intentions of the government ; but we entreat
it to believe, that on this point we are quite able to take care
of ourselves."

And the government is to reply, Gentlemen, neither you
nor the boy that holds the candle, know anything of the matter.
You are in utter ignorance that this country is the entrepot of the
precious metals, and that consequently all your statement that
you gain more by one trade than the other, is a mistake. You
do not gain more. You are not the men who can tell v/hether
you gain more or not. You were labouring under a de-
lusion, when you thought you were gaining more ; and your
inability to calculate the effects of the country being the entre-
pot of the precious metals, was the cause of the deception. Go
over your books again and apply the correction for being the
entrepot of the precious metals ; and you will find that when
you were in the gazette, you were out of it; — that when you
thought you were selling with advantage in South America,
that country was really not in a state to give you any profit ; —
that though your books are finally loaded with more pounds
than would have been procured from Portugal, pounds from
South America are not as good as povmds from Portugal, and
we have set out with showing you the reasons, why they should
not be and cannot be." It is in this way that the Board of
Trade is desired to battle with the merchants.

But perhaps all this is beside the mark, and the intention of
the author was to state, that without entering into the partial
question of whether the trade is of more or less advantage to
the individuals engaged in it, there is a more subtile reason
why it is hurtful in the main, and that this effect is to be brought
about by a diminution in the value of gold. If so, as intimated
before, it appears to resolve itself into a currency fallacy. At
the same time it is necessary to avow, that the data have not
been found sufficient for framing a clear idea of the nature of
the argument intended. The statement of it has not the pre-
cision of those that have preceded ; it is dispersed over too much
space, and must be presented in a compressed form before it
will be efficacious with the general. The nearest that has been
arrived at, is a suspicion that it amounts to representing, that
the willingness of the French to take gold, is a proof that they
want gold and would give a great deal for it, and therefore it
is politic to lay a duty of 20 per cent by way of checkmg the
trade that would bring down the value of our gold in France.
In other words, that because gold would buy us a great deal in
France, we are to take care that nothing is bought with it,

358

Third Supplement

because that would bring down the state of things, in which
gold would buy us a great deal in France. What else is in-
tended by " a new and unfavourable distribution of the metals
and a consequent fall of prices," which the one-eyed" ultra
advocates of free trade cannot enter into, — and " maintaining a
comparatively high scale of prices," — is positively not under-
stood. But of what use can it be to any of us, that a sovereign
in England will buy no more than a half-napoleon in France, —
if we are to prohibit ourselves from the advantage of carrying
the sovereign to France and bringing back twice as much as
could be bought with it here ? If the conjectural explanation is
right, it would be curious to see how a similar exhortation would
sound in the ears of the trader when applied to other cases.
" Gentlemen of the Leeds Cloth Hall, your cloth is in prodigious
request in France, the French would give you almost anything
you liked to ask ; reflect then. Gentlemen of the Leeds Cloth
Hall, how important it is to keep up this state of things, and
how infallibly it would be destroyed if the government should
allow your cloth to go to France, without imposing a 20 per cent
duty on the French goods that must be imported in return."

If this is not the argument, the true one shall be applied to
as soon as known ; but the matter for the present is obscure.

(Another Article on three subsequent Letters, is in the Westminster Review
for April 1833. See page 409 of the present Volume.)

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1833.

Art. XVI. — Third Supplement to the Article on the Silk and Glove
Trades^' in the Westminster Review for April, 1832.

'T'^HE object of the repeated Supplements to the Article
named, is to gather up from time to time the objections
issued against the theory of the double incide7ice of the extra
price got up by means of duties and prohibitions.
The " True Sun" of 8 Oct. 1832, says,

' The theory of the double incidence^ amounts to this. According
to the Westminster Review, the loss which a protective duty causes,
on every occasion of its operation, is not a single loss. There is a loss
to the consumer, to the amount of the increase in price, which the
protective duty in question, imposes upon him. About this extent of
loss, there can be no doubt. But according to the Reviewer's creed,
a second loss to the same amount, falls upon the trader, to whom but
for the monopoly, the consumer of the monopoly-priced article, would
have transferred the difference between the natural and the monopoly
price.'

The Review said, that there falls a loss upon this last-men-
tioned trader and his connexions,— exactly equal to the gain of
the favoured trader and his connexions, from the forced expendi-
ture at their shops of the difference between the natural and the

to Article on " Silk and Glove Trades'' 359

monopoly price ; and consequently the two, in the aggregate,
balance each other, and leave the loss to the consumer a pure
and uncompensated loss. And its object in this was to show,
that it would not be fair to advance the gain to the favoured
monopolist as any set-off to the loss of the consumer; and for
the simple reason, that it had already been set off once, against
a loss of exactly its own amount, to wit the loss of the dis-
favoured trader who loses custom by the process. The trick to
be guarded against, was this. When complaint is made of the
loss to the consumer, the common answer is, " Ah ! it is very
true; but then, you know, the gain to the monopolist ! There
will be these little fluctuations ; and we must be content. It
is clear that there is no loss in the aggregate ; for the loss to
the consumer on one hand, is at all events balanced by the
gain to the monopolist on the other ; and so, in the end there is
no loss to anybody." The object of the Review was to show
distinctly, that this is a fraud and a man-trap ; that the trick
is in leaving out the suffering of the disfavoured trade or trades ;
that the gain to the favoured trades whatever it may be, is
balanced by the loss to the disfavoured, and that the result of this
is, to leave the loss to the consumer standing as the final balance
of the account ; that there are two losses, to wit the loss to the con-
sumer and the loss to the disfavoured trades, and one gain, to wit
the gain to the favoured trades, and that since the two last are
equal, the balance left is the other.

The Review also said another thing ; which was, that the
gain to the favoured trades and the loss to the disfavoured, were
not only equal to one another, but were each equal in positive
amount to the other quantity in question, viz. the loss to the
consumer. The reasons for this conclusion may be seen in the
preceding Articles, and rest upon the fact, that the whole of the
price of any object, is divided in the shape of wages and profits
(with the inclusion in some cases, of rent or monopoly gain),
among the individuals concerned in its production. But whether
this was correct or not, would not affect the principal result, so
long as it is conceded that the gain to the favoured and loss to
the disfavoured trades 2Lve equal to one another. The " True Sun"
does not deny that that they are equal to one another ; though
it is disposed to doubt their being also equal to the loss to the
consumer. The consequence therefore appears to be, that even
if this point were given up, it would in no way affect the grand
result aimed at by the Review, which is that the consumer's is
an unbalanced loss.

Put a particular case, and see how it will stand. Suppose a
citizen's wife, before the imposition of a duty on foreign silks,
to have been in the habit of wearing foreign silk to the annual
amount of twenty pounds ; and suppose that in consequence of

350

Third Supplement

the imposition of a duty, she is oblis^ed to procure the same
articles from silk- manufacturers in England by the expendi-
ture of twenty-five pounds. It is presumed it will not be denied,
that the citizen, assuming him to be the keeper of the purse,
must expend five pounds a-year less on something else. Suppose
then he decides on sending notice to his tailor, that henceforth
he must trouble him for three suits a-year instead of four, and
hopes he will make them substantial to suit. Is the tailor a
losing man or not ? Put the question to all tailors, present or
hereafter, and the trades connected with them, and let their
opinions be taken on the point. And if they say Yes, — then
let the question be put, whether their loss and that of the trades
connected with them, is not exactly equal to the gain of the
silk trade and the trades connected with the same.

Or if the citizen refuses his wife more than twenty pounds
a-year for silk,— loses'the value of four pounds in quality,
and the tailor, or somebody in his stead, loses four pounds that
would have been to be expended on him if the citizeness had
worn silk of the same inferior quality under a state of freedom.
Whether the sum at issue shall be five pounds or four, depends
on whether the citizen decides on dealing with the fraudulent
silk-trade to the amount of twenty-five pounds or twenty ; being
20 per cent upon either.

Hear then how the *'True Sun" proceeds.

' To us, this second loss — this double incidence — appears pure fallacy.
We admit the first loss — the loss to the consumer. And we admit a
certain derangement in the channels of trade^ consequent upon the
interference by Government, between the consumer and the seller of
a particular commodity. But there, it appears to us, the influence of
the monopoly, terminates. The increase of price which the monopo-
list secures is not lost to the community, after it has found its way
into the monopolist's pocket. He expends it, in the encouragement of
some branch of trade, as certainly as the consumer from whom he re-
ceived it, would have done. The same amount of nutriment to trade
is, in all probability, furnished by the monopolist's mode of expendi-
ture as by that of his customer — but the channels are different. There
is, in short, a single loss — and a certain amount of inconvenience.'

All this is only throwing dust into the eyes of the tailors.
Men never doubted, that the silk-monopolist will spend the
money one way, videlicet upon silk-makers ; but they said the
tailor would have equally spent it another way, videlicet upon
tailor s journeymen. None ever denied, that the gain to silk-
makers by the sum's being given to the monopolist, was the
same as would have been the gain to tailors by giving it to
tailors ; on the contrary this was precisely the thing insisted on,
in all sorts of ways in which there seemed a chance of making
it impressive or intelligible. None ever said that in the aggre-

to Article on " Silk and Glove Trades'' 361

gate, the gain to the monopolists joined to the loss of the
tailors, (putting out of sight the loss to the consumer,) did not
leave the community exactly where it would have been in the
other way ; on the contrary this also was a thing which all
manner of pains were taken to persuade the public to believe.
But the simple point asserted, and which the " True Sun" insists
on sinking and conceaUng, is that tailors, and all connected
with them, lose by the arrangement. It calls it an inconve-
nience : and of course the monopoly to the silk-makers is only
a convenience. Here is one set of men struggling to take away
their living from another set ; but it is not to be a loss, but only
a certain amount of " inconvenience." The one thing certain,
and which all possible tailors are called upon, if they be men,
to look to and see they are not deluded in, is that tailors lose.
The prayer of the silk monopolists is, that they may be allovv^ed
to stop the money from the tailors on the ground that if it is
not in the tailors' pockets it is in theirs, and therefore there is no
harm done in the aggregate ; and this very piece of foolish foul
play it is, which the tailors or whoever else may be the work-
men concerned throughout the country, are desired to have
their eyes on.

The naked fact is, that the moment a trade or mystery, like
the silk-makers, says " Give us a monopoly," — it says ** Give
us leave to take the bread out of some -honest man's mouth of
the working classes, and out of the mouths of his wife and^chil-
dren, in addition to all losses that may fall to him in the cha-
racter of a consumer besides ;" and this it is that the working
classes have been putting together their hard-earned sixpences
to support and to maintain. If indeed the plot was confined
to the monopolists, then it was like other jobs, and there is no
more to be said. But if a single working-man who was not of
the monopolists, was induced to add the price of a day's labour, —
he stands as a wronged man, and must only learn to know bis
friends from his enemies better another time.

The "True Sun" of 29 Oct. proceeds to attack the system of
Free Trade generally. It gives the two first and the eighth and
ninth paragraphs, of the Article on " Free Trade" in the West-
minster Review No. XXIII for Jan. 1830 beginning "The
monkeys in Exeter Change," &c. ; which, as being in many
hands already, cannot be again copied here.

' In these paragraphs, are concentred the germs of all the falla-
cies which disfigure the reasonings of the supporters of our free trade
system.'

*' Suppose," says the Reviewer, that every individual in the com-
munity was a producer of some kind, and that every one had a * pro-
tection' for his particular trade. fVhat would he the result^ but that

362

Third Supplement

each would steal something out of his neighbour's box, with a general
loss to be divided amonggthemselves, in their character of consumers,'
&c. There cannot, we apprehend, be a grosser error, than that, which
this assumption of the Reviewer, involves. If every individual iu the
community was a producer — and if every trade was protected — we
deny that there would hQ, necessarily , any loss. The protection to each
trade, could have no other effect than to raise the prices of the products
of that trade — and as all men are, by the supposition, traders, the rise
of price in each department, would he only nominal. What would it
signify, that the baker added a fourth to the price of the bread, with
which he supplied his customers, providing the butcher, the shoemaker,
the tailor, and every other producer, added to their prices, in the same
proportion. Protection" in such a case, would leave t ach trade un-
disturbed — ^' protection" would be a clumsy sort of machinery, effiect-
ing nothing. But, decidedly, such a protective system would not,
as the Reviewer contends, be attended with a general loss.''

This is a mere currency deception ; of the same nature as it
would be to say, that if workmen of all kinds would agree with
one consent to tie up their right arms, or take some other course
that should reduce the quantity of work performed with a given
quantity of time and exertion to one half, prices would rise
every where alike, and everything be as it was before. There is
one thing that manifestly would not be as it was before ; and that
is, that a pair of shoes would take two days to make instead of
one, and a pair of breeches would take two days to make instead
of one ; — and therefore the artists who should exchange, or which
comes to the same thing, each buy a pair of the other's wares
at equal prices, for their own use, — though they might have the
** True Sun's" comfort of seeing the money price of each altered
in the same proportion, would have the further comfort of dis-
covering, that they had each given two days' labour, for what,
but for the invention of tying up their arms, they might have
had for one. " Protection" is forcing people to buy the work of a
man with one arm. It is saying to other people, " You shall
not have the thing in the way you might have it best and
cheapest, but it shall be artificially produced in some way that
is worse. I am a man with one arm, in comparison of others you
might have it from ; and you shall pay me for working with one
arm ; and if we had one arm all round, it would be so much the
better for us all."

The mistake, therefore, in this, — and a fearful one it is for an
industrious poor man to have wasted his money in trying to cir-
culate, — is in keeping back and denying the fact, that the work-
ing classes finally share in the damage, to thelextentjo which
they are consumers. Perhaps they will be told, that they do
not consume much, of goods of foreign origin ; — that though
they should be made to use bad iron in their tools instead of

to Article on " ^ilk and Glove Trades^'

363

good, and pay the price of ^ood because it is English, — and live
in houses made of bad wood instead of good, because it is Eng-
lish, — and pay for every ribbon then* wives may wear, at the
price of a best ribbon instead of a second-best, because the
second-best are English, — it is not much of all these things
they use, and therefore they are the better for losing on it. But
is there nothing else of foreign origin, that is of a little more
comparative importance to them, — for instance, corn f Are
the men who subscribe against free trade, dull enough to be-
lieve that they are to have their dishonest protections, and the
corn-grower is not to have his f And why should he not ?
According to the " True Sun," if there is half as much corn and
half as much everything else, there can be no harm so long
as the number of sixpences which jingle from one man to
another are raised to all in exactly the same proportion. It
is not the corn that man lives by ; it is the jinghng of the
sixpences. Half a loaf a-piece will be a whole loaf a-piece, if
there is only a certain quantity of money to pass from one man
to another. Just as well might a ship with a fortnight's pro-
visions on board, pretend to make it a month's, by an altera-
tion in the quantity of the money that was to circulate from man
to man between the decks, and shutting out supply from
abroad,

' But the facts, as ihey meet our view^ are very different from those
assumed in the first hypothesis of the Reviewer. He is himself aware,
that there are unproductive, as well as productive consumers — and he
forthwith attempts to show that the productive classes would not gain
by a protective system — that all thai is given to one of them, is taken
from another^^

* In this view, again, the Reviewer errs as widely as he did in the
former. A system of imiversal protection to trade — all men being
assumed to be producers — would, as we have shown, be attended with
no "general loss." A system of universal protection, where large
classes are unproductive consumers, would, on the other band, most
undoubtedly have the effect of throwing all the burdens of the State
upon these unproductive consumers. The immediate — the necessary
effect of ^' protection," is to raise prices — but against this rise of price,
in all the articles which he consumes, each producer would be de-
fended, by the privilege, which, under a protective system, he would
exercise, of adding to the price of the commodities in which he deals.
As~iaffecting producers, the universal rise of price, consequent on a pro-
tective system, would be only nominal — as affecting unproductive con-
sumers — as affecting those who bring nothing to market — the rise
would be real,'

Turn to the shoemaker and tailor who tie up each an arm
and exchange ; and see whether, as respects that particular

364

Third Supplement

transaction, they have the smallest remedy from the mutual
rise of price. Then take the case of, for instance, a glove-
maker and a silk-weaver, whose wives buy and wear a protected
ribbon and a protected pair of gloves ; and see whether, as
respects their own consumption,either is any more " defended"
than the others, and whether each would not gain alike, by
buying a French ribbon and a French pair of gloves for two-
thirds the price, and having the difference to spend on some-
thing else.

' The Reviewer, however, not content with denying that producers
would gain by a system of protection, proceeds, as if he felt instinct-
ively, the unsoundness of that conclusion, to show cause, why^ the
unproductive classes should not be subjected to greater severity of
taxation, than the productive.'

A clear shifting of the ground. Not a word was there of
taxation at all. What was said was, that the ** unproductive
were to be robbed for love ;" that there might be some show of
reason if the industrious classes were to gain by it, but the pre-
sent plan was to rob both productive and unproductive by the
invention of employing labour to waste. Taking from the un-
productive, — either with no benefit to the productive or with a
loss to the productive besides, — has no earthly resemblance to
a scale of taxation pressing unequally on the productive and
unproductive ; it is all a mystification. What follows there-
fore on this part of the subject, might be cut off as beside the
mark. Some incidental expressions however demand particular
resistance.

' Free trade exposes the productive classes to foreign compe-
tition :'

It must be utterly denied, that free trade exposes the pro-
ductive classes to foreign competition at all. It exposes the
monopolists who want to sell bad articles at the price of good,
to the competition, not of foreigners, but of their own country-
men. The demand of the silk-monopolist, for instance, is, that
in order to put three shillings into his own pocket, he may be
allowed to take two shillings from the wife and children of the
man who makes the cotton-twist that buys the cheaper silks in
France, and one shilling from the bantlings of the tailor or
other workman with whom the shilling would have been spent
if it had been left with the consumer, and another shilling over
again from the working-man, if he happens to be such, that
has the impudence, the extravagance, to think of laying out a
shilling in silk for a Sunday bon^net for his wife. And the ex-
cuse for all this unreasonableness is to be, that the next time
the silk-monopolist takes four shiUings from other people and

to Article on ** Silk and Glove Trades!'

365

pockets three, — the odd shilHng may chance to fall upon a
duchess. The only effectual way to oppose this, is to set the
suffering classes on their defence ; — to ferret out the individuals
who are to lose by every contemplated act of "protective" rob-
bery, and bring them up to protest against the iniquity. If
they are not men enough to oppose the taking the bread out
of their mouths, they must wait till their resolution is sharp-
ened by increased necessity.

* — free trade, while it leads to the greater cheapness of some com-
modities, throws thousands of artizans out of employment — reduces
the general rate of wages — and adds to the burdens of all pro-
ducers.'

Free trade leads to the greater cheapness of no commodities
but those which the monopolist would cause himself to be paid
for by the plunder of his fellow-artisans ; by the token that it
enhances prices in all the branches of trade which would suffer
for the monopoly. Instead of throwing thousands of artisans out
of employment, it prevents a thousand artisans of one kind,
from throwing a thousand artisans of another kind out of work ;
and makes an addition to the advantage of the artisans and
everybody else, in so far as they may be consumers of the goods
that the monopoly desires to raise in price. Instead of reducing
the general rate of wages, it freshens the rate in all the trades
where men will voluntarily buy, and makes given wages worth
more to the receivers besides. It adds to the burthens of pro-
ducers, only by preventing one set of British w^orkmen who can
make what people want to buy, from being burthened with the
support of another set who cannot. It brings no foreign labour
into competition with British ; the competition is between the
first of these sets of British workmen and the other.

The** True Sun" of 30 Oct. repeats the incomprehensible mis-
take, of supposing that the question was of subjecting the pro-
ductive and unproductive classes to a different " share of the
pressure of taxation." When a writer falls into an error of this
kind, the only resource is to hand him over to the judgment of
his readers, and beg them to make the due deductions from
their confidence in his results.

Tliere is no reason," exclaims our contemporary, " in saying a man
shall be protected, while he is producing, but shall be robbed when-
ever he begins to enjoy." But will the Reviewer venture to contend
that one man has a better right to be protected, when he begins to
cf^jor/, ^'tham another man has, to be protected, irhile he is producing
The productive classes are tsot protp:cted, while they are pro-
ducing: — why then, should they consent to the unproductive classes
being protected^ in their business of enjoyment ?'

In this there is a palpable double sense. The productive

366

Third Siipplejnent

classes are not protected " — that is, allowed to make the useless
robbery of one another which is recommended to them ; " why
then should they consent to the unproductive classes being pro-
tected'' — that is, saved from being uselessly deprived of what
they have, to see it thrown into the sea.

* That men do not, as the Reviewe?- contends, *^ labour for the
simple love of labour, but for the love of the enjoyment, they may
ultimately procure by it," is a very questionable position, in so far as
the great body of the productive millions are concerned. That they
do not labour for the simple love of labour, is undoubtedly true — but
that they are cheered in their never-ceasing toil, by any prospect of
" enjoyment," we must take leave, unqualifiedly, to deny. They
labour to escape starvation — and each ^successive day calls them to
renew the struggle with their gaunt and inexorable enemy. When,
therefore, the great mass of our fellow^men are denied protection,'*
while engaged in those processes of production, by which the whole
community are supported, it well becomes us to pause, before we accord
protection to the classes, whose business is merely " enjoyment.'*'

The proposal here to the working classes is simply this.
"You do not enjoy enough; therefore let it be enacted, that
nobody shall enjoy at all." The remedy is an odd one ; and is
specially recommended to the notice of those millions of indus-
trious men, who notwithstanding the light of the " True Sun,"
are still of opinion that by a decree against all enjoyment,
they might have something to lose.

^ The effect of an arrangement, like that to which the Reviewer so
scornfully alludes — an arrangement by which the hard-working
citizen should be protected," while "those who retire upon their
savings" should be robbed," would, we apprehend, have many ad-
mirable consequences. In the fir.st place, it would tend to lessen the
number of those, who do retire from active labour — while it would
augment the mass of capital employed in the business of production.
In the second place, by annihilatmg the unproductive classes, it would
create a perfect sympathy between the governors and the governed.
The unproductive classes have, hitherto, supplied us with law-
makers — and our laws have, accordingly, been framed almost exclu-
sively for the benefit of the unproductive classes. If all classes, how-
ever, were reduced to the level of producers, the laws would speedily
lose their taint of partiality, and the productive classes would not cry
for "protection" in vain. The immediate effect might be to disturb,
the few, in their business of "enjoyment," but it would at the same
time lessen the pressure upon the many, and it would, ere long, add
incalculably to the amount of general happiness. At all events.it must
not be forgotten, that "protection" has been rendered necessary, by
the misrule of the unproductive classes, and that it* protection " falls
heavily on any class, it ought to fall on that class from whose rapacity
it has sprung as an inevitable consequence,'

to Article on *• S>ilk and Glove Trades

367

A short time ago there might have been some hesitation as to
the policy of giving increased publicity to the existence of a
school of political economists, such as the above passages de-
monstrate. As it is, there is nothing to be done but wish the
Conservatives joy of their allies. The strongest confidence may
be felt, that the reasonable part of the working classes will
always be numerous enough to keep the unreasonable part in
order. Yet the phaenomenon forms a valid reason, for drawing
closer the union between those of the middle and industrious
classes who have property to lose, and the honest aristocracy.
The devil of plunder is abroad, and here is his cloven hoof.
Those who comforted him, and those who were deceived by
him, may settle their own affairs with one another and with
the public ; but there is no reason for withholding any
portion of the opinion formed of the spirit they are tampering
with. There he robbery in a red nightcap, instead of a
squirearchal hat and a qualification for a county. The saving
classes and the honest aristocracy, so long as they can hold
together, have got the central position cl la Napoleon^ and
will be able to move down when need is, upon the plunderers
great or little, at whichever end of the line they chuse to show
themselves.

The statements of 6 Nov. amount only to a repetition of the
assertion, that if men in general have half as much of every-
thing as they might, they may be comforted by an adjustment
of money prices.

* To a producer in England it must signify little whether he pays
three shillings or two, for his gloves, providing he shall have it in his
power, in case of paying a half more for the gloves he uses, of adding-,
in the same proportion, to the price of the commodities, in which he
deals. The power of doing so, would, as we have shown, be secured
to him by an efficient system of protection.'

The error in this, imply in leaving out his loss, upon all
protected goods of all kinds, he may happen to consume him-
self.

The displacing of native labour" (24 Dec), is non-existent ;
there is only a shift. The legislative protection" the monopolist
solicits, is against the home tradesmen with whom the money
would be spent he wishes to monopolize.

To the poor men who have clubbed their little portions to
support the Corn Laws and continue themselves in half a loaf,
the only advice that can be given, is to get any of it back again
if they can. To those of wider influence and greater knowledge
who joined in encouraging them to the sinful act, the account
to which thesepoor men will bring them before the public when

368 Policy, Justice, and Consequences

they find the end of their delusion, will be a correction in which
the discomfort to the sufferers will be vastly overbalanced by
the benefit to the community.

Westminster Review, 1 January, 1833.

Art. XVIII. — Con'^iderations on the Policy^ Justice^ and Consequences
of the Dutch Wa7\ By Vindex. — London. Effingham Wilson.
1832. pp. 32.

**^7^INDEX'' is a w^ell known pubhc character. He wasthe col-
^ league of " Civis" durini^ the greatest part of the American
War ; and afterwards joined with " Politicus " in opposing the
French Revolution.

He is at this moment called from his retirement by the neces-
sities of the King of Holland. He begins his advocacy, as need
was, with a hit at Napoleon and the French republic ; both,
undeniably, great enemies of his principal.

* Very often (though hid under disguised forms,) ambition is the
real cause [of war], as was the case with the wars of Frrince under
Louis XIV, and again under Napoleon, who made wars and conquered
countries in order to parcel out kingdoms to all his relations ; much
in the same way as a short time previously the great Republic con-
quered little states, in order that they should^ like Satellites, revolve
with her in her orbit, or be incorporated with her, as might best pro-
mote her power and splendour.' — p, 3.

This is figurative and astronomical ; but the best part about
it is the opportunity it gives for refreshing men's memories on
the fact, that the conquests of the French republic were the
conquests of police-men over thieves ; who when they have at-
tempted and been foiled, are never quite content with the
degree in which the victors follow them up into their harbours.
They were the beating and trampling down, of the predecessors
and allies of the same men who have just received so signal
a defeat in the success of the Reform bill ; of which it is confir-
mation strong, that the same nation, under no more modifica-
tions than are the inevitable result of the difference of tiroes
and circumstances, should be again found in close conjunction
with the supporters of freedom here, and have contributed
powerfully to that overthrow of the common foe, which on the
former occasion was unhappily confined to the continental
branches. And what the Republic left unfinished, Napoleon
carried on ; the more is the pity, that he should have cut him-
self off from the great source of strength, the loss of which,
though the momentum of the machine continued for a dozen
years, ensured his fall at last.

of the Butch War,

369

^ But it would puzzle any one to assign a reason, good or bad,
for our war against Holland. We have not even ambition to gratify,
at least as far as we are concerned ; for what then do we make
war?' — p. 4.

A civil question demands a civil answer. The Vindicator
shall be told for what vi^e have made war.

Something more than forty years ago, a neighbouring nation
attempted to mend its government. The classes that were living
by the robbing of the public here, like wise men took the
alarm ; and joining themselves with all that was uncivilized,
brutal, and of ill report upon the continent, attacked the nation
that started the odious word Reform. The honest part of
the English community did all they could to hinder it ; but
the honest and energetic part was then so small, that it was
miserably defeated, and in various ways expiated the fault of
ill success, some on scaffolds, some in exile, some under the
hoofs of yeomanry, and all in plunder. On the continent, mean-
while, the success of the just cause w^as great ; but unhappily an
ardent genius forsook the rock from which he had been hewn,
and a series of military misfortunes threw him into the power
of the common enemy. That enemy murdered Mm, and taxed
us in our bread. For a long time we lay defeated. Our allies
were subjected to a pretender, by foreign arms ; and we were
told, that the state of Europe was gone by, in which it was
possiljle to resist. A large portion of the existing territory of
France, conveying with it the command of her principal natural
bulwark, was cut off and given into the keeping of one of the
subalterns of the nest of tyrants that weighed upon us. That
subaltern was nicknamed for the nonce King of the Nether-
lands. The undisguised object, was to secure the submission
of France, and through her of England, to the barbarian com-
bination of which our Tory clique was district partner. The
best things cannot last for ever ; nor the worst. At last came
the Three Days of July. The individual who first '* endossaif^
the uniform of the National Guard, fired a train which com-
municated with the rapidity of light to England. Still, had
the enemy been alert, he might have extinguished it; but years
of non-resistance had caused him to wax dull. On a former
occasion when France had for a time thrown off the foreign
yoke, the English tyranny did not give the nation time to
think, but assumed as a primary and uncontested fact, that by
the attempt to throw ofl", the countries were at war. On the
present occasion, they fortunately hesitated; the Tory blood
had run thin, since the old and palmy time. A party on such
principles, is vanquished the moment it becomes afraid to be

VOL. II. 2 A

370

Policy, Justice, and Consequences

outrageous. A dozen men sent to the Tower with the vigour
of the ancients, might have arrested the machine. But instead
of that, the first communications from England were allowed
to bear the news, that in England the die was cast, and nothing
was wanted but to go on. A few weeks afterwards, the advanced
posts of the barbarian powers were driven from Brussells. Again
the rump of Tory domination temporized ; while the feathered
Mercury of the English Radicals was rolling summd diligentid
along the road to Brussells, and landed from the first steam-
boat with a representative of the Belgian insurgents. Here
then was Belgium recovered from our enemies. A little week
saw it torn from between the teeth of our oppressors, and re-
stored to the situation of a bulwark to us and our allies. We
of the great European family of freedom, had one and all ap-
proached the rampart of the Rhme. An important post held
out for the common adversary. Meanwhile things had gone
well in England. The junction of the popular interest with
the honest aristocracy, had driven from office the conductors
and supporters of the wars against European liberty, and esta-
blished a liberal of 1792 at the helm of public affairs. The dif-
ference of two Great Britains was thus made ; by algebra. The
liberal powers proceeded in union, to complete the independence
of Belgium bv negotiation. The parties who might be called
the actual belligerents, agreed to abide by the award ; but the
delays inherent in negotiation, gave time for the beaten faction
in England to take heart of grace, and encourage the limb of
the barbaric combination which they had decorated with the
name of King in Holland, to virtually refuse compliance. The
liberal powers proceeded to act by arms ; and the world was
cheered with the two great tricolours tioating in union. Years
of dishonour were wiped from the British ensign by that single
contact, — Caraccioli, Ney, Napoleon; — an honest man may
look at it now, and think that at least it is not the tla^ of tyrants
and of knaves. The land forces of France laid siege to the in-
truder's hold in Belgium, and pushed it with the vigour of men
each of whom knew he was raising a bulwark against the inva-
sion of his own hearth by the barbarian. The enemy defended
himself neither well nor ill ; that is to say, like a rabbit, he
waited till he could be dug in to. The British Tories were beaten
over again in Antwerp ; for they were in it, and behind it, and
round about it; the refusal to yield it altogether, was their work,
their last struggle, the final effort of their hopelessness *. Every

* See the droll story of Lord Aberdeen's quoting by mistake in the House of
Lords on the 26th of January 1832, a note to the Conference which n-as not
isiued by the Dutch plenipotentiaries till the 30th.—C-^a Belgique et la HqU

of the Butch War,

371

French shot was a knell to the cause of public injury in Eng-
land, and a sound of hope and confidence to the millions who
had just conquered a Reform. Does Vindex now know, for
what we were at war with Holland ?

All these events are of necessity very agreeable, to individu-
als who began as many as four years ago, hoping against hope,
to maintain the thesis that the Belgian bulwark ought to be re-
gained for France*. Some wondered, and some exclaimed
** What will these babblers say?" The end has in substance
been obtained ; we have nearly got Belgium, between us and
the caste of kings. It is vain, however, to try to make all sides
see things in the same light. The wolf that is to have his fangs
drawn, will wince and howl, in whatever manner tlie process be
begun. Those who love the reign of the barbaric powers and
profit by it, will naturally grieve at seeing their lieutenant ex-
pelled from Antwerp. Men in such circumstances must not be
visited too narrowly. Something must be allowed for human
feelings and human disappointment. It is a heart-breaking
thing, as has been elsewhere said, to be crossed in despotism ;
and the pang extends down to the lowest retainers of the cause.
Let but any humane and considerate person place before him-
self the immensity of the change, and consider the draft that is
made on the endurance of frail mortality. It is not every man
who has lived to see the forces he thought his own in fee, em-
ployed to pull down his usurpations and build bulwarks against
his hopes of their return. Such suflTe rings may excuse a little
ill-humour and a little treason. Time was, that the Conserva-
tives made great noise if a man was found communicating with
a power at war, forwarding a trivial plan, or aiding in sketching
a campaign or the defeat of the opponent's. But matters are
changed now, and the trenches before Antwerp were filled with
British Tories, whom nothing but French politeness hindered
from stringing up as spies. All venomous things have their
use, and so have these. The triumphant people of Great Bri-
tain know better than before, the faction with which they have
to deal. They have had useful opportunity to learn, the abne-
gation of all law except their interest, — the jura negant sibi nata
spirit, — characteristic of the party which they must either cut
olf from hope and harbour, or be their re-vanquished thralls.

^ She [Holland] has done us no injury; she has taken none of our

lande. Lettre a Lord Aberdeen; suivie de la Traduction deson Discours a la Chamhre
des Pairs, et d'^ Notes sur ce Discours. Par Victor De La I\Iarie. — Bruxelles ;
Chez tous les inarchands de iiouveantes. Fevrier 1832.)

* See the Article on " Bhanyer's Songs" in No. XIX of the Westniinster Re-
view for January 18i:9 (p. 36 of Vol. I of the present Work) ; on the Desirableness
of the Reunion of Belgium to France" in Ko. XXII for October 1829 (p. iOd of
Vol. I of the present V\lotk) j and others.

372 Policy, Justice, and Consequences ^c.

ships, though we are taking her's even without a declaration of war.- —

Can anybody state, how many of our ships had been taken
by the French republic, when our Tories in their terror of re-
form the first time determined to go to war; — or how many the
second, when they went to war to avoid fulfillment of a treaty?
Not that it follows, that to have taken no ships from us is a
requisite towards making a just enemy ; but it does follow,
that to have taken no ships is not a sufficient circumstance
to make a war that Tories should be allowed to cry out
against.

< What has Holland done to you, that you should wish to crush
her ? Do you go to war for Belgium ? What is Belgium to you r" —
p. 7,

Everything. The interest you take the other way, is evi-
dence that it is everything. Is it possible to see a Tory inte-
rest, and not to have an interest on the other side ? You want
the Cossacks in Belgium, to threaten France, and through-
France, us. It is the great lunette and outwork before the
Channel, of the Reform that is behind it ; and therefore we
want to have it for our friends, and you for yours. The Re-
formers of England will give up the Isle of Wight, as soon as
see Belgium in the hands of the Holy Alliance again.

^ It is now insisted that Antwerp shall be French^ or, what is tanta-
mount, Belgian under French influence, and yet so jealous was this
country before even of the Dutch, who never would and never could
do it any harm, that they were not allowed to have either a naval
arsenal, or a dock-yard, to build ships of war, nay, not even of the
smallest size.' — p. 10.

If there is to be a government in this country, which is to
exist only by forcing foreigners to forego the natural advan-
tages nature may have bestowed upon their territories^ — it will
be put down by the refusal of the English people to support it
in any such odious cause. If there is to be a war of conquest
to take arid keep Antwerp for Great Britain, — ^propose it, and
see how many will endure to hear of it. And if there is no
chance for being supported in taking Antwerp, what chance is
there for being supported in taking away the use of Antwerp ?
Suppose the French should intimate, they wish very much to
take away the use of Chatham ;— they see certain proprieties
too, in closing or at all events checking by duties, the naviga-
tion of the Thames. Why should any man yield to such a de-
mand ? And why will any man yield to such a demand ? The
closing of the Scheldt is in truth one of those antiquated hor-
rors, like the Slave Trade, which gone-by politicians have been

Programme to West. Rev. for 1 Aprih 1 833. 373

in the habit of supporting as the life's blood of their country,
but which the modern race of English are heartily ashamed of,
and would be much sooner induced to make a crusade against,
than to disburse a shilling to support. Modern England hap-
pily is not in the condition, which makes her existence identi-
cal with the power of setting Europe at defiance. She can
afford to see other nations in possession of the natural force
which God has given them, as well as an honest man to see
his neighbours with unshackled limbs. The days of England's
tyranny weighed heaviest on her own people. It was the English
that were truly vanquished, hke the serfs of the feudal lord.
Just such advantage as the well-disposed inhabitants of a walled
town had by the power of the feudal robber that domineered
within their borders,— had the people of England by what the
Tories called the domination of the seas." Give us our own
sea, and Reform within it ; and let all other people make the
best of theirs. The nations of Europe have no natural enemy,
but " the monarchical principle." To drive back the barbarian
diplomacy into its frightful deserts, and extirpate the domestic
parties who enlist under its banners, is the grande pmsee, the
single object that civilized men will fight for now. The great
fraud of commercial rivalry, which taught the masses that they
were mutual enemies, is everywhere coming down. People can
no more be set against people, for the advantage of the common
foe. Europe is one society, with one enemy. There has been
much treason, much weakness, and much folly ; mais encore,
vogue la galere. A time is coming that will pay for all ; so
far as wasted blood, betrayed hopes, and all the ruin that springs
from cowardice and treachery, are capable of repair. In the
mean time, depend on the English people. They know that
all they have got, can only be preserved by going on under
their present leaders, if they will march ; if not, under those
that will.

Programme to the Westminster Review for 1 April, 1833.

^HE ministers seem determined to have their steeple-chase
in Ireland, coute qui coute. It is true they have been cut
down from a canter to a hobbling trot. But there may be enough
left yet, to end in what they have not counted on. Fiat voluntas
Dei ; they would, and nobody could hinder them.

In the mean time all English Reform is halted, till the Irish
go gently under the harness of courts-martial. After which,
there is nothing but the fear of popular resistance, to hinder
anybody that pleases from doing the same in England. Truly
John Bull was a simpleton, to see his brother put into the mi«
nisterial bilboes so quietly.

374

Equitable Adjustment.

Nothing goes forward but the Factory Bill ; — a fraud got up
to distract attention from Slavery abroad, and lay up a store of
charges against the moral character of the manufacturing po-
pulation, to be drawn upon whenever the question of the Corn
Laws shall come on, in proof of the unadviseableness of permit-
ting the extension of manufacturing industry.

The French royalists are in a sad dilemma. They are like
to have a Due de Piquette. Will civilized men never find out
how barbarous it is, to have the good or ill of nations depending
on the philoprogenitiveness of their idols ?

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1833.

Art, I. — 1. Pledges defended and offered in a Letter to the Electors of
Lambeth, by Daniel Wakefield, Esq. — Printed by Truscott, 37^
Blackfriars Road. 8vo. pp. 12.

2. Cobbett's Weekly Political Register. Sept. 8. 1832.
"Vl/^HERE is the man so ignorant as not to have heard of an

^ ^ " equitable adjustment,'' or so base as to object to it ? The
sound itself is irresistible ; and it is clear upon the face of things,
that we must have an "equitable adjustment."

What is an equitable adjustment however, is of that perplexed
part of the business of law-giving, which it is not so easy to
settle by acclamation. For it is not to be supposed that anybody
is so silly, as to expect that he is to carry a vote for an equitable
adjustment, and have the how, the what, and the where, left
blank for himself to fill up at discretion.

The roots of this question lie as far back as the Revolution of
1688. Soon after that event, money began to be borrowed for
the public service, — or if the expression be preferred, for sup-
porting and defending the revolution which had just been
made, — and the produce of the taxes pledged for the interest.
There is no use in tracing the progress of the system; like all
mischiefs, it "progressed" fast. The objects for which the
money was borrowed and expended, were good or evil acording
to the politics of the day ; and there would be no wrong in
stating, that according to the judgment of the parties now
happily uppermost in the country, the major part of the objects, —
the whole perhaps except the earliest, — were abominably bad.
This however is not the immediate concern of us of the present
generation we may have some power of affecting the good
or evil conduct of the government for the coming century, but
we can have none of altering the past. The government, in
the exercise of the legal power which it had,— though undeni-
ably against the best efforts of a minority who thought its con-

Equitable Adjustinent.

375

duct wrong and tried to hinder it, — spent and threw away the
people's money for purposes worse than useless, and multi-
plied twenty-fold the power of doing this, hy the invention of
borrowing on the credit of the interest. The principal fur-
nished, might to a certain extent come in the first instance
from individuals eager to promote the objects for which the
borrowing took place ; but the majority were moved by no other
feeling than that which induces a shopkeeper to sell his wares
without inquiry into the use that is to be made of them ; and
the greater part of the value w as rapidly transferred under the
shadow of the existing laws, to holders perfectly free from poli-
tical bias, and actuated solely by the prospect of making a
favourable investment for the produce of their industry, or a
provision for their families.

But this was not all. The question became complicated in
another way, through the dishonesty and baseness of the poli-
tical party which had bestrid the shoulders of the nation like the
Old Man of the Sea, and has only just been shaken from its seat.
It occurred to the Conservatives, (for they were conserving then),
that after having mortgaged the taxes, it was easy to cheat the
mortgagees. And the way they set about it, was by an issue
of fictitious paper. In this way they brought down the value
of the pound sterling to fifteen shillings ; whereby they, first,
pocketed what was got for the extra pieces of paper, and secondly,
paid the old mortgagees only fifteen shillings in the pound;
while to preserve the value of the taxes, required no greater
craft than laying the duties ad valorem. If the mortgagees
or those to whom they had transferred, had been conspirators in
the public wrong, this might only have been the devil cheating
his own. But they were not ; they were no otherwise implicated,
— and there was no further justice in plundering or allowing
them to be plundered, — than there would be, in the event (from
which the hfjavens protect us) of the Conservatives coming back
to rule and power, in demanding from every tradesman to sur-
render the price of all he might have been guilty of selling to
a reformed government.

Things went on in this way, with decreasing prospects of
alteration for the better. Men began to bet there never would
be any alteration ; and one hasty speculator chose to hoist a
gridiron and declare he would be fried upon it if ever the paper
was paid in gold. The paper is paid, and the collop remains
uncooked ; and all that can be said in excuse is " Who would
have thought it ?'' There was manifestly one way in which the
government might pay in gold ; which was, by paying at other
people's expense. And this it was, the speculator of the grid-
iron should have thought of, before he proclaimed that he had

376

Equitable Adjustment^

hedged his cuckoo. If the mode of laying the taxes could be
changed from imposts ad valorem to imposts fixed in nominal
amount, it only required the command of a little superfluous
revenue to begin with, to ensure the arrival of a time, when the
having to pay the fundiiolders in a currency of increased value,
would be overbalanced by what would be gained upon the resi-
due of the taxes, and so the gradual buying-up of the super-
fluous paper become a gainful operation*.

Whether the government that paid in gold, knew all the
bearings of what it was doing, may possibly be matter of dis-
pute ; but it manifestly knew more than the speculator of the
gridiron. It was on one hand putting an end to the continu-
ance and progress of an existing wrong, and on the other it
was causing new losses which might themselves be reasonably
represented as coming under the same category. By the
cx)ld-blooded swindling of the Conservative government, the
mortgagees, consisting ultimately for the most part of the in-
dustrious classes or their representatives, were cheated of a
portion of their interest ; and an injury of the same nature was
inflicted on all who from other sources were the owners of ancient
contracts. No way appeared open for the relief of these classes,
but retracing the steps which the swindlers had taken. And
even this, made no pretence of direct compensation for losses
sustained ; it only put an end to their further accumulation.
It did not attempt to say, " The shillings of which you were
swindled by the Conservatives yesterday and the day before
that, shall be given back to you but only *' Something shall
be done to prevent the taking another shilling from you to-
morrow." To those however who had lent their money at in-
termediate periods during the progress of the depreciation, a
prospect was held out, not only of cessation of plunder, but of
compensation, which might either be partial, complete, or ex-
cessive, according to the dates at which their loans were made=
Where the compensation on a particular loan w^as excessive,
there was no certainty that this fell into the hands of one of
the individuals who were also sufferers by the loans where the
compensation was still defective ; but it went to make a sort
of compensation in the gross. A class was injured, and the
same class was benefited; it was like showering first grape-
shot and then bread-loaves on the same battalion, where though
the distributions in both kinds may not light always on the same
heads, there is no doubt that the masses that have undergone
the baptism of the first, are the better for the second.

* See the Article on the Instrument of Exchange, p, 320 of Vol. III. of the
present Work.

Equitable Adjustment.

377

So far, however, the good done was undeniable ; unless the
plea should be at any time set up, that the suffering classes
received in the gross more than the amount of their previous
losses. But to this good there were two sets off in other quar-
ters ; which were, first, that this more or less perfect compen-
sation to the mortgagees was made through a measure very
expensive to the community at large, to wit the buying up the
fraudulent paper of the Conservatives ; and secondly, that at
the same time that a set of old public and private creditors were
righted, a more modern set of private debtors were injured and
brought to loss. Both of these should evidently have their fair
share in the account ; and only the fair one. The way there-
fore must be, to try to get at the balance of good or evil. With
respect to the first, or the expense to the community, the fourth
part of a currency which in substantial value might be esti-
mated at forty-five millions but was nominally sixty, was to be
bought up ; which if done gradually, as it must be, would cost
about thirteen sound millions, or the value of an annuity of
some 650,000/. The fraud upon the fundholders (to keep back
for the present the effects on other creditors) would, if they had
been all old fundholders, amount annually to one fourth of
about forty millions (being the interest of the debt), or ten
millions ; from which if three-fifths are struck off as an allow-
ance for those who were not of the oldest class, there will remain
an annuity of some four millions, or about six times the annuity
which expresses the expense to the community of buying up.
The community therefore laid out one pound, to do a right of
six; which can hardly be called a bad bargain. Not that it
made a direct gain thereby in a pecuniary view ; because the
one pound was expended merely to prevent the six pounds from
being taken from the right man and given to the wrong. But
exactly the same may be urged against all the expenses of go-
vernment for purposes of internal regulation ; the whole or
principal object of which, is simply to prevent this going of
money to the wrong man. The second count, or the sufferings
of the private debtors which arose during the return to justice,
will be much more than balanced, if they are set off against the
justice done to the old creditors of the same class. For it is
manifest that their amount must be much less, if it was only
from the circumstance of men having had warning of the vari-
able value of outstanding debts and credits, and consequently
being put upon their mettle to reduce the magnitude of the
sums so left to hazard. There can therefore be no doubt, that
six to one, may be taken as the proportion of the whole good
done, to the cost of doing it. And this cost whatever it may
be, can only be fairly put to the charge of the authors of

378

Equitable Adjustment,

the wrong ; in the same manner as the parties who should cut
a sea-bank and inundate a county, would be justly chargeable
with all the trouble and expense incurred to remedy the mis-
chief.

In this state of things the question seems to reduce itself
definitively, to whether any class of men have made an unfair
charge for losses, or been overpaid ; for to propose to go back
to the old state of things because there have been losses and
expenses in removing from it, would appear to be the same
kind of roguery or folly as to say in the case of damming out
an inundation, *' The expense of this has been enormous.
The whole country-side has sent its carts and horses, and done
statute-work past reckoning, to put this dam together. Where-
fore we of the parish of Little-Wit, move and propose, — that
the dam be carried^ away again.'' There is no exaggeration in
this illustration of the proposal, that because a grievous evil has
been remedied at a grievous cost, a third grievous evil shall be
incurred for the sake of getting back to the first.

The Tables of the late Mr. Mushet * may be supposed to be
familiar to every person who pretends to have voice or opinion
on the present subject. They, however, stopped short, and at
rather an interesting point ; which was at the question, of what
would be the result of calculating the gains and losses of the
fundholders at compound, in place of sim,ple interest. This
deficiency has been supplied by the exertions of a well-known
friend of political improvement, John Childs, Esq. of Bungay,
Suffolk ; the results of which are here next given, and will be
most readily understood by supposing each column of Loss or
Gain to be inserted after Mr. Mushet's column headed " Annual
Loss &c." or " Annual Gain &c." in the Tables whose numbers ^
are expressed.

* A series of Tables, exhibiting the Gain and Loss to the Fandholder, arisiner
from the Fluctuations in the value of the Currency. From 1800 to 1821. Jiy
Robert Mushet, Esq. — London. Baldwin and Co. 1821.

Equitable Adjustment.

379

Amounts of the respective sums lost or gained by the Fundholders on each year
from 1800 to 1821, through receivincr their interest in a money less or more
valuable than that in which tlie principal was lent j calculated to 1821 at
compound interest 5 per cent, interest made principal half-yearly.

Year

TABLE 1.

TABLE 2.

TABLE 3.

TABLE 4.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

IjOSS.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

£.

£,

£.

1801

5,304,837

75,566

4,391,717

62,558

32,892

1,523,944

21,708

164,172

304,162

1,450,512

20,662

156,261

289,506

1,380,618

19,666

148,732

..>

275,555

1,314,093

] 8,719

141,565

262,278

1,250,772

17.817

134,743

249.640

1.190.503

16.958

••

128,251

237.611

1,133,138

16,141

122,071

226,161

1810

5.467,067

77,875

103,346

287,279

3,028,212

••

43,137

••

10,464

24,322

7,622.310

108,576

227,166

565,942

8,011,575

114,120

254,066

625,306

••

8,366,441

119,176

278,887

680.019

5,296,980

75,452

132,065

341,925

5,041.742

71,817

125,702

325,449

763,310

10.873

82,230

152,348

726,529

10,349

78,268

145,007

1,157,594

16,490

51,186

84.650

1820

643,757

9.171

71,634

133,024

101,306

201,698

65,065,651

926,831

1,121,232

1,423,77a

2,850,242

2,561,640

380

Equitable Adjustment,

Amounts of the respective sums lost or gained by the F'undholders on each year
from 1800 to 1821, through receiving their interest in a money ^ess or more
valuable than that in which the principal was lent ; calculated to 1821 at
compound interest 5 per cent, interest made principal half-yearly.

Year

TABLE 5.

TABLE 6.

TABLE 7.

TABLE 8.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

£.

£,

£.

1801
2

..
..

3
4

..
..

1810

227,084

,621

157,684

267,651

103,575

,194

71,922

122.079

343,855

90,281

238,768

405,282

366,432

96,208

254,447

431,895

387,114

101,638

268,807

456,270

230,494

60,517

160,053

271,670

219,387

57,601

152,340

24,117

.333

16,747

28,425

1820

747

195

V 519

880

33,227

8,724

25,123

39,163

1,902,058

33,974

499,393

8,919

1,320,768

25,642

2,24L852

40,043

* Equitable Adjustment.

381

Amounts of the respective sums lost or gainedhy the Fundholders on each year
from 1800 to 1821, through receiving their interest in a money less or more
valuable than that in which the principal was lent; calculated to 1821 at
compound interest 5 per cent, interest made principal half-yearly.

Year

TABLE 9.

TABLE 10.

TABLE

11.

TABLE 12.

Gain.

JjOss.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain,

£.

1801

••

1810

174.232

87,232

8,353

79,468

39,787

3,810

51,105

263,824

132,088

••

12,647

62,712

281,148

140,761

13,476

77,463

297,016

148,706

14,237

91,137

176,847

88,541

8,478

24,107

168,326

84,274

8,070

22,946

73,023

69,504

18,504

9,264

887

55,153

1820

573

287

63.256

21.

25,494

12,763

1,222

76,478

1,459,365

26,067

730,653

13,050

69,958

1,249

278,365

388,519

382

Equitable Adjustment,

Amounts of the respective sums lost or gainedhy the Fundholders on each year
from 1800 to 1821, through receiving their interest in a money /ess or more
valuable than that in which the principal was lent; calculated to 1821 at
compound interest 5 per cent, interest made principal half-yearly.

Yeab

TABLE 13.

TABLE 14.

TABLE 15.

TABLE 16.

Lous.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

£.

1801

1810

109,148

121,309

18,635

132,524

50 624

64,743

31,422

133,993

582,970

61,623

29,908

127,536

554,880

34,261

127.8G5

397,118

1,410,476

32,61 1

121,704

377,982

1,342,511

20.316

104,360

327,-^24

1.175,917

1820

29,884

110,614

343,420

1,219,407

43,618

123,385

377.956

1.326,981

489,347

16.^690 j

54,022

649,258 j

50,624

2,083,929

7,613,145

Equitable Adjustment

383

Amounts of the respective sums lost or gained by the Fundholclers on each year
from 1800 to 1821, through receiving their interest in a money less or more
valuable than that in which the principal was lent; calculated to 1821 at
compound interest 5 per cent, interest made principal half-yearly.

TABLE 17.

TABLE 18.

TABLE 19.

TABLE 20.

Year

Loss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

IjOss.

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

£.

£,

£.

1801

-J

8
9

1810

105,421

660,670

100,341

628,836

83,331

522,287

1820

91,281

572,059

15,384

105,463

660,928

36,103

4,259

485,837

3,044,780

51.487

4,239

384

Equitable Adjustment,

ABSTRACT
of the
preceding.

ABSTRACT

calculations made at
3 per cent throughout
instead of 5. {The
previous calculations
urniVed to save room.')

Loss,

Gain.

Loss.

Gain.

£.

65,065,651

••

32.018,078

926,831

455,676

1,121,232

1,423,775

579,232

684,364

2,850,242

2,561,640

1,471,362

1,235.803

1,902.053

33.974

980,447

20,180

499,393

8,919

257,418

5,298

1,320,768

25,642

680,809

15,230

2,241,852

40,043

1,155,600

23,786

1,459,365

26,067

752,257

15.482

730.653

13,050

376,624

7,751

69,958

1.249

36,055

741

2r8.365

388,519

144,276

219,499

489,347

160,690

254,481

92,669

54,622

649,258

28,379

371,413

50,624

2,085,929
7,613.145
435,837
3,044,780
51.487
4,259

26,478

1,190,774
4,339,005
279,684
1,752,824
30,501
2,530

79.060,961

18,618,263

39,217,172

10,<287.534

Equitable Adjustment

385

Here is the result of the calculation of compound interest at
5 per cent. But as there is no reason for acceding to the dic-
tum of that member of a game-preserving parliament, who
said, that " everybody knew five per cent to be the natural
interest of money,"— it is desirable to know the consequence of
employing a different rate. And this also has been provided by
the same indefatigable calculator; columns being found added
to the " Abstract " and " General Abstract " in the preceding
page, containingtheresultsof employing 3 instead of 5 percent
throughout, the previous calculations being suppressed to save
room. The inference from these is, that if 5 per cent is too
high a rate, the fundholders may not have lost. Now the fact
is well known to have been, that the country-gentlemen who
were the lawgivers in the unreformed time, were anxiously
struggling to prevent the very men in question from being
allowed to take more than 5 per cent interest ; which is proof
that above 5 per cent might have been had, and therefore 5 per
cent is not too much.

As far then as arithmetic goes, the whole charge and plea of
the fundholders having had more than they ought, is a thing
for knaves to recruit for fools with. But a fresh ground set up
is, that the prices of goods have declined, from causes distinct
from the depreciation of money by excess ; and therefore com-
pacts should not be kept. For if this is not meant, it is no fresh
ground, and the answer has been given already. Suppose, then,
a man has made a bet, which has ended in his being called on
to pay a hundred pounds on a certain day. And suppose he
should say to his creditor, " You won of me a hundred pounds.
But mutton has fallen, and therefore I hope yoa will take less.
If it had risen, you may depend on it you would never have
heard of me ; but as it is, I intend you shall take less.'' This
is the same kind of reasoning as if the insured, on seeing his
ship come safe to port, should refuse to pay the insurer, on the
ground that there had been no loss ; — knowing full well, that
if things had turned out the other way, the insurer must have
paid. If mutton had risen, not a word would anybody have said
of the necessity of purchasing the same quantity of lohis and
chops for the fundholder ; but because it has fallen, out crawls
a generation of fraudulent debtors, and proposes it as a reason
for breaking compact.

But there is another defect in this last scheme or argument,
which is still more fatal. Suppose a man did, lend a leg of
mutton or its price, when mutton was scarce and dear ; does it
follow that he is paid by issuing to him a leg of mutton or its
price, when mutton is plentiful and cheap? To put a case,
suppose a man in a town besieged, lent a crown when mutton

VOL. II. 2 B

386

Equitable Adjustment,

was at a crown a pound and other things in proportion ; is
he paid, by saying to him when things are cheaper, There,
Sir, is sixpence ; it will buy you a 'pound of mutton " 9 All
mankind would revolt at such a proposition, except the
equitable-adjustment people ; and the wrong is in representing
the pound of mutton at one time as of the same value with a
pound at the other,~the fact being that it is of very different
value, the proof of which is, that it fetches ditferent prices, —
or if preferred, that to procure it, required parting with the
result of one hour's labour in one case, and ten in the other.
It is to be hoped they will persevere ; that they may see what
an overthrow they will obtain from the indignation of their
countrymen.

But it would be too hard to charge the whole to malevolence
or dishonesty. A lack of comprehension is at the bottom of at
least half. The point which is too much for the understanding
of the projectors, is that the community would not gain the
amount though the debt were sponged-off tomorrow. They are
unable to receive the doctrine, that if every man held a share of
the debt proportioned to the taxes he pays towards it, sponging
the debt would only be filling his right pocket at the expense
of his left; and that consequently, all gain which could be
made by any person in the actually existing state of things,
must be by the equal loss of somebody else, which in the aggre-
gate can make no national gain. And here arises the nice point,
the delicate point, the point which will serve the Joseph Sur-
faces of either House for an age of trickery when the time
comes, — which is the distinguishing between the consequences
of borrowing and throwing away a million, and the consequences
of ceasing to pay the interest. The moment it is asserted that
nothing can be gained by ceasing to pay the interest, up will
stand a spruce gentleman and declare, that if that be true, there
would be no harm in borrowing and spending eight hundred
millions more. It is a hopeless case ; unless a reformed parlia-
ment should have brought the remedy. In the old state of
things, it would have been as hopeful to try to teach a fox-
hunter Euclid, as to expect to weed out such an imagination
from the House of Commons. And this it is, rather than male-
volence, which is at the bottom of the outcry for robbing the
fundholders. Men cannot comprehend, if the contracting of
debt be an evil, how it should not be a special source of national
wealth to stop paying the interest afterwards. Their mental
plenishing is all too feeble to discern, that the fact of the in-
terest being owing from one man to another, is perfectly good
reason why nothing can be gained in the aggregate by ceasing
to pay ; though it is the most babyish of all fallacies when

Equitable Adjustment.

387

applied, as the well-booted Tory bankers were fond of applying
it, to prove that there was no harm in borrowino: million after
million and throwing away. Another form under which the
same confusion shows itself, is in the persuasion of some over-
powering good that would be the result of what is popularly
called paying the national debt. There is a perplexity of ideas,
between paying the debt ourselves, and getting the man in the
moon to pay it for us. If the latter personage has the means
and could be persuaded to perform us this good office, the bene-
fit to us would be clear. But if we are to do it ourselves, where
is the mighty advantage of getting rid of an annuity, by laying
down the present value at the market price ? If it was advan-
tageous for men to do it, the thing might, and probably would,
be put in a course of doing tomorrow. It is not to be denied
that there are some gains that might be made ; for example,
the machinery for collecting taxes and paying fundholders
might be spared. But it is clear the speculators on paying the
national debt, have something more magnificent in view than
this. They devoutly believe, that paying ofi" the debt, would
be gaining the amount. In those far distant times when the
governments of European countries shall have undergone
changes it would now freeze men's blood to think upon, a
question may arise of whether it would be advantageous to try
to pay off a public debt by an advance of the principal. But
till then, under permission, we are well as we are ; and con-
siderably better than we should be, if any government within
the imaginings of living men, had the power of urging the
seductive fallacy, that we were a nation without a debt, and
therefore admirably situated for the incurring of a new one.

As an earnest of the result which is likely to ensue from
pressing the project of defrauding the public creditor, it is inte-
resting to view the way in which the plan is spoken of by men
seeking an entrance into the reformed parliament by direct ap-
peal to popular support. Take for example the following extract
from the pledges offered by the candidate on the popular interest
for Lambeth.

' 2. I promise tq oppose any scheme for robbing the public creditor'
The debt^ it is true, was incurred by the boroughmoiigers ; but the
people encouraged them to create it, approving of the war with revo-
lutionary France, shouting for victories obtained with borrowed money,
and all but persecuting the few who recommended peace and
economy. They were then parties to the contract and would be bound
to pay the debt, even though all the creditors were boroughmongers,
or bishops. But who are the national creditors ? The people them-
selves ; widows and orphans whose property has been invested in
government stock ; depositors in savings-banks ; and others who have

2 B 2

388

Equitable Adjustment,

laid out the whole of their small property in public securities. The
greater part of the debt has been purchased by persons^ each of whom
receives an interest for his money less than 200/. a-year, or about 4/.
per week. And now, mark my words, (without setting up for a pro-
phet I want your attention) there will be plans for robbing those
who have bought the debt ; and such plans will find favour with
many of the Whig and Tory aristocracy as soon as ever their hands
shall be taken out of the public purse. They who spent the capital
will be for evading payment of the interest as soon as ever they
shall be left to their private resources. I am all for taking their hands
out of the public purse, and therefore long for the time when they
shall countenance projects for robbing the savings-banks ; but I will
oppose such projects, come from whom they may; and if you hanker
after anything of the kind I am unfit to be your member. This is
test the first.'

^ 3. The source from which funds are to be derived for paying the
interest of the debt is quite another question. The debt is a double,
a tenfold, burthen through the awkward manner in which we bear it.
Those whom the people encouraged to contract the debt have thrown
the burthen of it on the people, have made the burthen as great as
possible by taxing industry for its support. Who that had a weight to
carry would tie it to his legs ? A tax on the poor is a cruelty as well
as a tax, being paid with deprivations and sorrow ; whereas the rich
may remain rich after paying taxes, each in proportion to his means,
and without any diminution of happiness. Our taxes seem to have
been framed with a view to inflict pain as well as to raise money.
Most of them, besides, are a hindrance to the production of wealth,
restricting the whole produce of industry instead of only distributing
some of it in a particular way. Considering the industry and skilful-
ness of Englishmen, and the rapid progress that we are capable of
making in the arts of production, I believe that, if all taxes wJiich
check production were repealed, the national wealth might become so
much greater, that a tax on property, sufficient to pay the interest of
the debt, would not be felt as a burthen. For these reasons I look to
a complete reform of our system of taxation as one of the best conse-
quences of the reform act. Conservatives, both Whig and Tory, will
probably oppose such a reform, not so much through selfishness as
from ignorance ; wherefore I promise to oppose them in this matter
if you should elect me.' — Pledges 8^c. p. 6,

The *' scheme " of the author of the Political Register is of
a very different bearing ; as may be seen from the copy fol-
lowing.

' 1. Not by any means to depart in any degree whatsoever from the
present money standard of the country.'
2. To take all the public property; namely, the crown-lands, the
crown -estates, the woods and forests, the Duchies of Cornwall
and of Lancaster, the real property now possessed by the bishops,
deans and chapters ; and to enforce the rigid payment and collec-
tion of ail arrears due to the public fi;om defaulters ; and, in case

Equitable Adjustment,

389

of their being dead, ])ursue their heifs and assigns rigidly, accord-
ing to the letter of the well-Rnown and most admirable " Statute
of Public Accomitants,^^ YiSissed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
and still unrepealed ; and to make the receivers of all unmerited
pensions, sinecures, and grants, ^'public accountants^" and pursue
them and their heirs and assigns accordingly.'

* 3. To take the whole of what is called the national debt; and in the

first place, reduce it one half in amount, we having, for many
years been paying twice as much interest as is due to the fund-
holders, even supposing it to be a debt that we are bound to pay
at alL'

^ 4. Then cease to pay interest upon a quarter part of this half at the
end of six months, and so on, in order that interest might cease
to be paid upon any part of it at the end of two years.'

* 5. Then appoint a board of five commissioners to receive and examine

the claims of suffering fundholders, and leave it to that board to
make such compensation as might be found consistent with justice
to the nation and humanity to the parties, out of the proceeds of
the property mentioned before.'
^ 6. To disband the standing army, abolish all internal taxes whatso-
ever, raise a revenue of from six to seven millions a year in
custom-house duties, making this Government as cheap as that o^^
America, and never suffering an Englishman again to see the
odious face of a tax-gatherer with an ink bottle at his button-hole,
leaving for the people to keep for their own use the fifty-four
miUions a year, now pocketed by the tax-collectors in part, while
the rest is sent up to London.'

* 7. To make an equitable adjustment of all contracts and debts.'

^ This, gentlemen, is my scheme ; this is my way of putting money
into the pockets of the people, or rather of preventing it from being
taken out of their pockets.' — Weekly Political Register. Sept. 8. 1832.

It is impossible not to estimate the spirit and perseverance
with which the author of the Political Register has opposed
the paper-money fraud ; and his own *' scheme " has all the
superiority, which open freebooting has over circuitous larceny.
The defects in it, are that the allegation of the fundholders
having been paid twice as much interest as was due, is not only
without evidence, but in the teeth of evidence ; aud that the
appointment of a board of commissioners &c. may be dispensed
with, by the readier process of the country's paying its debts
without. The scheme for adjusting contracts and debts by the
price of mutton, has also been shown to be naught. If it is
chosen to take the public property, crown lands and the Duchies
of Cornwall and Lancaster &c. and apply them to buying up the
debt that is in the market, and so reUeving the tax-payers of
the interest ; this is quite another thing, and what it is conceived
neither gods nor men could be found to object to. In all events,
let the people hold together ; and pluck the robbers, but not

390

Equitable Adjustment,

pluck one another. The great safety of the fundholders is in
reform ; a fundholder that is not a reformer, is a fool it would
be charity to relieve of his money. Get liberty of trade, and
then the patrons of " equitable adjustment" will be obliged to
pay their own debts and allow the payment of other people's.
The pressure of public misery, arising from the prohibition of
commerce by Act of Parliament, makes the only fulcrum on
which they have a chance to set a foot.

Postscript to the Article on Equitable Adjustment.

A provincial paper has started two objections to the contents
of this Article ; which will be taken in succession.

^ If then this calculation be correct, the fundholders and not the
public have been wronged by the alterations in the value of money.
But are not the whole of the calculations of Mr. Mushet and Mr.
Childs vitiated by the assumption that the difference between the
mint and the market price of gold measured the depreciation of paper
money ? Was not the price of gold itself lowered by none being re-
quired for the circulating currency ?'

* We should be glad if he [Mr. Childs] would favour us with his
opinion on this question, and to learn from him what difference an ad-
dition of 5 or 7\ per cent to Mushet's estimate of the extent of depreci-
ation of paper would make in the result of his calculation.' — Man-
chester Times. 16 March, 1833.

The question then is, whether, supposing such a fact to have
existed, its operations would be against the general results
stated by Messrs. Mushet and Childs, or in favour of them.
Assume then that the calculators have not rated the depreci-
ation high enough, and that it ought to have been rated, for
instance, at one-twentieth more than was done, throughout.
The first effect will be, to increase each of the losses of the old
or original fundholders by one-twentieth ; and of consequence
the amount of each and all of these losses at compound interest
to 1821, will be increased in the same proportion. In the same
manner the several gains and losses arising from the difference
between the depreciations at the two moments of lending and
receiving the interest, must be increased by one-twentieth ; for
if each of these two depreciations is to be increased by a
twentieth, their difference, which is the element of gain or loss,
will be increased in the same ratio ; and the amounts at com-
pound interest to 1821, and the balance of these amounts, and
the yearly value of that balance, will be increased in the same
also. So also the Gain to the fundholders arising out of the debt
contracted above that redeemed from 1800 to 1821 having been

Equitable Adjustment.

391

contracted in an inferior currency, must be increased by the
same addition of one-twentieth ; for it was contracted in a
currency whose depreciation was greater by a twentieth than was
reckoned for. The final consequence therefore is, to increase
the " Annual permanent result to the Fundholders," as given
in the *' General Abstract" in p. 384 for any particular rate of
interest, by one-twentieth that is to say, to make the annual
Loss greater in the case where interest was reckoned at 5 per
cent, and the annual Gain where it was reckoned at 3. And
the same if the depreciation had been under-rated in any other
proportion.

At the same time there may be great doubt whether there
was any such thing as a fall in the value of gold from the cause
assigned. 410 millions were borrowed and expended between
1800 and 1821, principally in loans and foreign wars ; and the
question is, whether much of the 40 millions (for that must
have been the utmost amount) of gold thrown out of employ-
ment in the English currency, could have staid to cheapen bul-
lion at home, or have produced any sensible effect by being
thrown, at the average rate of about two millions a-year, upon
the market of the universe. If, however, it was so, — the con-
sequence would seem to be, to give the fundholders at 5 per
cent a claim for an additional yearly sum proportioned to the
addition to the estimate of depreciation.

The other objection is to the illustration of paying the lender
with a pound of mutton ; and may be answered in less space.
In fact it has perhaps arisen altogether from the want of suffi-
cient explanation in the original statement ; and circumstances
hereafter mentioned having induced the cancel of a leaf, ad-
vantage has been taken of it to try to supply the defect.

* It would, indeed, be robbery to give less for the man's leg of
mutton than he consented to take for it during a famine. But the
question comes, whether its price was raised by the scarcity of meat,
or the over abundance of money,' — Manchester Times, lb.

That question is settled by the fact, that the leg of mutton
answer is only intended to apply to the case where the rise of
price shall be urged as having arisen from the scarcity of meat.
If it is urged as arising from the over abundance of money,
then the other is the answer ; to wit, that the fundholders have
after all been underpaid. The answers must not be put to the
wrong objections, and then declared not to fit.

Finally, as this Postscript was on the point of being printed,
information was received from Mr. Childs, that he imagined he
had discovered an error in Mr. Mushet, consisting in employing
in the calculation of the Gain of the fundholders (in the last
item but one in the " General Abstract" in p. 384 preceding), the

392

Booth's Free Trade, as

proportion of 12/. 135. 7d. to 87/. 6^. 5d. instead of to 100/.
There has hardly been time for giving to the point the con-
sideration it demands ; but there has appeared sufficient ground
to induce the alteration of the results in p. 384. If the debt
(to take round numbers) had been contracted in money of
which 100 nominal pounds were intrinsically worth only 80/.,
and the interest (suppose 5 per cent) is now paid in pounds of
full substantial value ; — five pounds interest are in fact paid
for every 80/. instead of every 100/. And the proper interest for
80/. would be 4/.; the interest therefore is 1/. too much, being
of the actual interest paid. Mr. Mushet seems to have
reckoned |g. If the alteration is right, it would have given
Mr. Mushet a victory instead of something like a failure. It
would have shown a loss to the fundholders even upon the cal-
culation of simple interest at 5 per cent ; and would probably
have produced a powerful effect on the public mind. As it is,
Mr. Childs's correction is worth six millions to the fundholders ;
they will therefore probably look into it, and see whether it is
maintainable or not. If it is, the final result will be, — that in-
stead of the fundholders having *' for many years received
twice as much interest as is their due," they are on the whole
receiving too little by 422,093/. per annum; so that the value of
nearly eight millions and a half if interest is still taken to be
at 5 per cent, and of above twelve millions if it be supposed to
have fallen to 3^, is owing to them, and likely to be*.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1833.

Art. VI. — Free Trade, as it affects the People. Addressed to a Re-
formed Parliament. By Henry Booth. — Liverpool; Wales and
Baines. Hurst ; London. 1833. pp. 40.

gather up and put forward whatever can be turned to the

support of principles deemed just and right, is the limited
service of a Review. And the readiest of all ways is by a run-
ning commentary.

* It has been too much the custom to regard the question of Free
Trade, as one of abstract principle and speculation; as a branch of the
recondite and somewhat formidable science of Political Economy ;
interesting as a subject for discussion and argument, but proper, at the
same time, to be approached with salutary caution, and with especial
distrust, in reference to any practical results ; as plausible in theory,
but in no wise to be depended on, in the application of its principles
to the ordinary routine of trade and commerce.' — p. 3.

* After six years* examination, nothing has appeared to shake the accuracy
of Mr. Childs's correction. It stands therefore as a discovery for which gratitude
is due to him from every person who has 10/. a-year in the stocks throughout
the country. — Added in 1839.

it affects the People,

393

What is " abstract principle," — and " abstract speculation"?
It is true enough that it has been the custom to regard, or more
correctly, to describe, the question of Free Trade as one of ab-
stract principle and speculation ;" but can the describers tell what
they mean by these phrases, — or do they know themselves, — or
can they produce a specimen of an *' abstract principle" or an
" abstract speculation," — or show the face of a living man
who ever acted, or advised anybody else to act, on either ?

The truth is, the logicians made a most unfortunate blunder
in a name ; and upon this blunder, all who have any interest in
disguising truth and persuading men to act irrationally, have
been living ever since. When the logicians found out or ob-
served, that if two and two made four in Europe they did the
same in China ; — that if the various northings and southings of
a vessel, added together respectively and one taken from the
other, gave its whole northing or southing in the Mediterranean,
they did the same with equal certainty in the Red Sea, and
may be trusted for doing so on the Lake Dibbie whenever
the vessels of an African Steam-Navigation Company arrive
there ; — they by some strange fatality, if not by that direct in-
spiration of the dsemon which is stated to bring prisoners to the
Old Bailey, called such instances, — not universal, as was mani-
festly their proper title, — but abstract conclusions. They made
the mistake of confounding everything with nothing ; and
instead of calling such truths by a name which expressed the
fact of their holding good in all possible cases and situations,
they gave them a title which was easily construable by a stupid
or dishonest man, into there being no necessity for their hold-
ing good at all. Fancy now, that some unfortunate supporter
of things as they ought not to be, should undergo the misfortune
of having his notes for speaking altered by a wag, and after-
wards hold forth in the House of Commons or elsewhere in the
style that follows. — ' I rise, Sir, to protest against the appli-
cation of universal truths. I am a plain practical man, and
cannot give into the absurdity of being led by conclusions
which necessarily hold good everywhere, I decline to submit.
Sir, to the " crazy generalities'' of gentlemen on the other side,
who because they think they have established in some indi-
vidual cases that taking ten per cent from the principal leaves
only ninety per cent behind, — insist on applying it to the case
where I and my honourable friends are interested. We deny
that there is any justice in affirming, that the more we take
from other people, the less we leave them for themselves. We
assert the contrary, and that our taking away is really and truly
the measure of their gain. We bar all reference to general
principles. We appeal to " plain fact, physical and arithme-

394

Booth's Free Trade, as

tical proof, sober reason, and humble expediency, and we'deny
that any of these lead in the slightest degree to the conclusion,
that because in some other case a man had only ninety percent
left when ten was taken from him, the same is true when we are
to be the takers.' This would not be a bad representation of
the spirit, and the letter too, of some of the exhibitions of the
practical men.

^ It is obviously the interest of those who enjoy a monopoly, whether
partial or complete of certain departments of trade, to excite a preju-
dice against any change, as theoretical and untried ; and the delusion
has been the more easily kept up, owing to the partial and desultory
manner in which, on some occasions, and the too learned and abstruse
method in which, on others, the great practical question has been
treated. The principles of Free Trade have been ably expounded in
various works of the highest authority ; but these are sealed books to
the generality of readers. Again, the question, as included in distinct
branches of trade, has been powerfully but separately illustrated. The
Corn Trade, the Silk Trade, the Sugar Trade, the Timber Trade, the
Export of Machinery, the Shipping Interest, the East and West India
Interest, &C.&C. all have been discussed. The abstract reasoneris sa-
tisfied that the argument is incontrovertible; and the merchants, or
parties interested, are no less dissatisfied with the unavoidable conclu-
sion. Each subdivision of the great question has been debated, and each
has been considered as involving a point for subtle discussion between
the economist and the merchant or manufacturer, engaged in the par-
ticular trade under consideration. But all this time, the most impor-
tant view of the subject has been in a great measure overlooked. The
People have been too much forgotten. In the following observations
we shall endeavour to treat the question as one of popular interest and
high practical importance; as intimately affecting the substantial
well-being of the nation.' — p, 4.

It only requires to be proved that in each of the several
cases of *' the Corn Trade, the Silk Trade, the Sugar Trade,
the Timber Trade," &c. all that is gained by the monopolist
is lost twice over by somebody else ; and then there seems
little more chance of oversetting the " abstract" reasoner's
final conclusion on the subject, than there would be if each of
these interests proceeded by the way of taking one shilling
from the sufferers for themselves, and a second to be thrown
into the sea.

' The following axioms we shall consider as established, and that
it would be a waste of time to offer proof of their truth and correct-
ness:' — p» 5.

The procedure by axioms is unfortunate. One of the first
steps that will be made in the coming age, will be to revolt
and utterly cast the gorge at the notion of axioms. If a thing

it affects the People.

395

can be proved, let it ; if it cannot, then say nothing about it.
There is no such thing as a self-evident proposition ; unless
perhaps, that " whatever is, is." Whenever a man professes
to build on axioms, an even bet may be taken that some of
them are wrong.

^ 1st. If you prevent imports, by prohibitory duties, you prevent
exports to the same extent.' — p. 5.

This would be better for being accompanied by the proof;
which is, that the imports must either be paid for by exports of
some kind, or be got for nothing. Another important point is
also missing ; which is, that in addition to the loss to the ex-
port trader that should have been, and the loss of the difference
of price to the consumer (which two together make a perfect
balance to the advantage to the trader in whose favour the
prohibition is issued), there is a gratuitous loss of the same
magnitude as the consumer's, which falls on those traders with
whom the difference of price would have been spent if it had
been left with the consumer. Hence " the Corn Trade, the
Silk Trade, the Sugar Trade, the Timber Trade, the " &c. are
all so many ingenious inventions for creating a national loss to
the amount of the difference of price proposed to be put into
the pockets of the monopolists.

^ 2d. A business or manufacture, protected by high duties on im-
portation, will not, on that account^ yield more than the ordinary rate
of profit, — otherwise every one would engage in it, which is an absur-
dity. The public, therefore, suffer from being constrained to pur-
chase a protected article at a high price, while the manufacturer does
not benefit.'' — p. 5.

This is wrong. A business protected by duties, will yield
an increased rate of profit, till the increased number that apply
to it, brings down the rate. And all the time this process is
going on, it will be what is technically called a better business;
and those who are already engaged in it, will have the benefit
of this, and moreover all the chances of securing to them-
selves an increased share of the business after profits shall
have been reduced to the old rate. In the same manner, to
take the contrary case, if a monopoly be opened by the removal
of the prohibition, there is no doubt of the trade becoming a
worse trade. Profits will be reduced in it, till the weakest go
out; during which process, all the engaged must lose; and it
will depend moreover on the degree in which the existing
traders approach to equality of strength, whether the dimi-
nished demand does not fall on all and every of the engaged,
in the shape of a diminution of business ; and if it does not, all
that one escapes, must fall in the shape of additional weight

396

Booth's Free Trade, as

upon some other. In all of which, it is necessary to keep in
view, that any of the gains or losses so arising to the monopo-
hsts, is accompanied by a double loss or gain to the rest of
the community. It does not seem to be generally understood,
that there are two ways in which a trader may gain, either
separately or both at once ; — one, the having a greater rate of
proiats on a given quantity of business, the other, the having
a greater quantity of business at a given rate of profits. And
the contrary, in the case of loss,

' 3d. Food is the basis, the sine qua non of population ; that is^ of
life and all its enjoyments: population being limited only by the h-
mitation of food; for manufacturers, and workmen of all descriptions
will increase and multiply, if you will furnish food in return for their
labour.' — p. 5.

The plenty of food leads to population ; and the power of
populating, is the measure, the gauge, of public happiness. It
so happens that populating is the very first thing men like to
expend their competence upon. The public in fact, takes out
its happiness in population. It is true that this populating
tends directly to reduce its owai materials ; and so does eating,
a pudding. But the eating is the happiness. There are those
who counsel, there should be no pudding ; because, they say,
eating will reduce it. The best of puddings, they are prepared
to prove a temporary blessing ; whence they infer, that the
whole race is naught. This is not an unfair representation, of
some arguments afloat on corn.

* 4th. In order that a whole community may obtain the greatest
possible quantity of the conveniences and comforts of life, it is ne-
cessary to allow the merchant to make his purchases wherever he can
procure his commodities of the best quality, at the cheapest rate.' —
p, 5.

This rather surpasses what even Euclid has ever tried to
huddle into an axiom. It is true, however; but it is in strict-
ness a corollary from the first proposition, which was, that in
every case of monopoly, an amount equal to the difference of
price to the consumers, is thrown into the sea. For if this is
true, " the greatest possible quantity of the conveniences and
comforts of life" is reduced by said amount. In all cases
therefore where the monopolists parade the gains to their re-
spective trades from their monopolies,— or point out the losses
that would arise from their destruction ; — hear them out, and
then tell them, that this is the exact amount of the gain that
would arise to the whole community by the removal ',—not to
the\ community after deduction of the monopolists, but to
the whole community, themselves and monopoly interests

it affects the People,

397

included. There is a page in one of Blackwood's Magazines,
would make a striking figure under a process of this kind.
The author proceeds, —

^ Of the innumerable articles of commerce or manufacture which
have, at different periods, become the object of mercantile adventure,
the food of man is beyond measure, the most important. To this ob-
ject, therefore, we shall direct our chief attention, taking merely a
rapid glance at the system of policy pursued with respect to a few
other commodities, in the first instance. We shall begin our preli-
minary investigation with Timber, and inquire how far the Legisla-
ture, with reference to this article, has complied with the rule above
laid down, of allowing the merchant to purchase it wherever he can
obtain it of the best quality, and at the cheapest rate. The best tim-
ber in the world for building purposes, is that obtained from the Baltic :
the worst timber in the world is that obtained from the British settle-
ments in North America. Our merchants are prohibited purchasing
the best timber under a penalty of 2/. 15s. per load ; and they are en-
ticed to purchase the worst timber, by the comparative trifling duty
of IO5. per load. And what is the result ? An immense amount of
capital during the last quarter of a century has been attracted to the
North American timber trade, for the purpose, or with the effect, of
compelhng the people of this country to use the worst description of
timber ; while, at the same time, the capital so employed has not
yielded a larger profit than if it had been allowed to flow into other
channels, and had been the means of procuring the best timber, and
at a lower rate. Thus there has been an enormous waste of property :
the public sufiTers grievously, while the merchant does not benefit.' —

To put the case in its brevity, the man who uses Canadian
timber has 21. 5s. per load taken from him in the goodness of
his timber, to be given to a man who has timber he wants sell-
ing in Canada ; and besides this, some other English traders
lo&e to the same amount of 21. 5s., which would inevitably have
heen laid out with them if the money had been left with the
right owner. To say that the Canadian also will lay out the
money on somebody, is met by the fact that the disappointed
traders would equally have laid it out on somebody. The fraud
to be kept up is, to evade or conceal the circumstance of there
being a pure and unbalanced loss to the amount of 2/. 5-^., which
would not have taken place if the Canadian had not been al-
lowed a legal robbery. And the whole after all, is only a round-
about exhibition of the fact, that a greater price is given for bad
timber than needs : which, it requires no ghost to tell, is throw-
ing away the difierence.

All the other frauds are of precisely the same nature ; the
Sugar and Coffee fraud, the Train Oil fraud, the China fraud,
the Silk fraud, the Woollen fraud, the Leather fraud, the Cotton

398

Booth's Free Trade, as

fraud, the Iron fraud. Our commercial policy is a mass of con •
fluent frauds ; by which everybody robs everybody, and throws
half the booty into the sea. But they all yield in individual
importance to the master pustule, which is the Corn fraud.
By this, a gross sum of twelve millions and a half per annum
is thrown away, in order that a certain other sum, amounting
probably to five millions, may be taken from the men who work
for it, and given to the landlords whose first principle of law,
physic, and divinity, is not to work at all. In other words
seventeen millions a-year are torn from the mouths of the suf-
fering manufacturer and his starving children, in order that
Jive millions of it may find their way into the pockets of a dis-
honest and tyrannical class who have got a law that nobody
but a land-owner shall be in parliament. When pressed upon
the point, they bully and appeal to their humanity and charity.
The charity is easily defined ; — they take with a bucket and
give with a spoon. They take seventeen millions a-year out
of the pockets of the industrious and the poor, and urge in re-
turn that they sometimes give a crown to an old woman at
Christmas. They can hardly be said to be personally responsi-
ble ; for they labour under the misfortune, like the slave-o wners
in the West Indies, of having been brought up under the per-
suasion that they were the born lords and tyrants of those whom
they oppress. But the oppression is not the less for that ; nor
will be longer endured for it. And not content with this burn-
ing wron^, they appear to have been curious in the grievous
and the horrible. Could the art of man have gone further,
than to invent the idea, that a per-centage should be taken out
of the portions of the widow and the orphan of the industrious
classes for the service of the state, and that the robber class
should exempt themselves f View too the insulting pretext on
which this is defenfled. If a per-centage were taken upon the
succession to a landed estate, by repetition an amount equal
to the price of the estate would come into the hands of the
government ! As if a per-centage upon the pittance of the
widow and orphan of the industrious man, did not do the
same in exactly the same number of repetitions. Examine too
the delusive and totally unstatesman-like nature of the repre-
sentation altogether. If one per cent (for instance) were taken
upon the succession to a landed estate, a hundred repetitions, it
is said, would take an amount equal to the value of the estate.
The blunder in the mind of the stater of this, most probably
was, that in the course of a hundred repetitions the whole
estate would be absorbed and gone. But (to say nothing of the
fact that if this was true it must be equally true of the inheri-
tance of the industrious man), is there a shadow of reality about

it affects the People.

399

the statement at all ? Suppose that of a landed estate the yearly
rent be four or five per cent upon the value, and that every
twenty or thirty years one pound is taken out of these four or
five ; — does that absorb the estate ? — has it the smallest ten-
dency to do it? — does it take one sino^le step towards such a
consummation ? — if it went on for millions of years, would it
have made the slighest progress towards it, or have done any-
thing but what all taxation must do, take away a portion from
the ^present enjoyment of the payers. Well may men still
admire. Quanta sapientid regitur mundas.

What the people have to do is clear. To avow their intention
of employing the legal and recognized power they possess, not
only to procure the abatement of the two nuisances, but, First, to
make the best attainable calculation of what has been substan-
tially taken from the community by eighteen years' Corn Laws,
and lay a tax which, calculated to perpetuity, shall be of pre-
cisely the same value and amount, upon the rent of land; —
And Secondly, to estimate in the same manner the probable
amount of legacy duty of which the land-owners by the gross
and mean trick of making themselves their own lawgivers have
defrauded the public, and lay an extra legacy duty which,
calculated to perpetuity, shall be of precisely the same value
and amount, upon the descent of landed property. Some per-
sons may think there is something difficult or mysterious about
the calculation ; they may therefore be usefully informed, that
there are individuals called actuaries, whose profession it is to
make calculations of this kind, and who if the grounds (that
is, the different sums paid or withheld, with the dates) be
given them, will for a moderate fee give precise answers, upon
principles which nobody can gainsay, and which in fact are re-
cognized daily by the courts of law on the declaration of this
same class of professional persons. Six years ago, the people
might have accepted something very difierent ; but their cir-
cumstances are not the same as six years ago, — they had not
the Reform Bill. No man ever got anything by giving up
his just right where he had power to enforce it. To give up
a part to save the rest, is a perfectly difi'erent question ; but
the people have no occasion to give up a tittle here. They
have only to understand the thing, and use the means ; and,
first or last, their enemies must he at their feet. And when-
ever that happens, they will overturn the most cruel, dishonest,
and insulting structure of human wrong, that with the ex-
ception of the West-Indian tyranny, has sullied the page of
history. The land-owners will call this, setting one part of
society against another. Is not the New Police, setting one
part of society against another ? There is no use in mincing

400 Booth's Free Trade, as it affects the People.

phrases ; the people are trampled on by the rank and gross
oppressions of an insolent order, who push their injustice to
the cottage of the starving man and the bed-side of the
dying, and feed their hounds on the blood and sinews of the
industrious population. Two points are their law and their
gospel; one, that they will not pay taxes and other people
shall ; the other, that fortunes shall be made for them at the
expense of other people. All this they consider as their birth-
right; and they turn like hunted wild beasts upon anybody
who talks of taking it from them. The people have the
legal and parliamentary means of relieving themselves, if
they have union and sense. The question therefore reduces
itself, to whether the people have union and sense. A man of
forty- Secretary power, (though not always right, yet thoroughly
right here), has laid hold of one of these subjects, and has got
at least one eye open to the other. If he ever lets go while
God gives him life and strength, — if he does not appear year
after year and session after session, speaking his printing and
printing his speeches, till he carries the Abolition of this
agrarian Slavery, — he will deserve to be buried under piles of his
departed " Registers," like the Roman virgin under the shields
of her countrymen. As the military Instruction-Book says to
lieutenants of hussars, — Why does he delay any longer to make
himself famous ? He has all the game in his hand ; and if he
leaves the oppressors a fragment of their wrong, he is bound at
the least to charge them an eighth for salvage.

The argument for the Corn Laws derived from the alleged
fact that the British grower is the manufacturer's best customer,
is reducible to the question of whether he is so good a cus-
tomer that it is for the manufacturer's interest to let him take
money out of his till to expend it at his shop. No manufac-
turer would be deceived by such a plea in a particular case,
and no robber in grain would be impudent enough to advance
it ; but it is marvellous how men are perplexed when the
proposal is to rob them in society. And one more word to
the manufacturers. If it is true that the interest of the manu-
facturers and land-owners are so bound together, that it is for
the benefit of the manufacturers to allow the land-owners to
prevent the exchange of manufactures for foreign corn, — why
should it not be equally true that it must be for the benefit of
the land-owners to allow the manufacturers to lay a tax on
home-grown corn and so increase the quantity that must be
bought with their manufactures abroad? If the connexion is so
intimate, turn aud turn about is only fair. Would it not be
clear, that if the manufacturers were benefited by a tax on
home-grown corn, the land -owners also must have the benefit

Effects ofAboliticn and Commutation of Tithes. 401

of the improvement in tlie condition of their best customers ?
If they say, " But you cut off part of our custom from us —
so do the land-owners now. Try this ; within the next twenty
years, there might be somebody found to ask the question in the
House of Commons.

There are some mistakes in the book ; as for instance, that
*'the result of tithes is toinliict on the soil an artificial sterihty,
to the extent of the tithe.'^ It inflicts a degree of artificial
sterihty, but probably not to the extent of much above a twelfth
part of the tithe, and this from what may be called accidental
causes ; the error arising, from supposing that there can be
any difference in the price of a given quantity of corn in the
market, whether it be sold for the benefit of the tithe-owner or
the grower. It is in fact the ol^solete mistake of Mr. Ricardo ;
which has been driven out of the field, and nearly given up by
all supporters, in England, in France, and everywhere. But
inaccuracies on insulated points, need not spoil the rest ; and
therefore great good may be the consequence of the circulation
of Mr. Booth's popular treatise on Free Trade.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1833.

Art. VII. — A few Words on the Effects of Abolition and Commutation
of Tithes. Tail's Edinburgh Magazine for March 1833.

QINCE "request" has been made that the Reviewer (raean-
^ ing, as is apprehended, the writer of the Article on the
Bishop of Bath and Wells's pamphlet in the Westminster
Review for January 1833, and on the " Improvement of Condi-
tion of the Clergy" in the same Review for April 1832), would
"examine carefully the prol able effect of that meas-^ure on our
prospects as to the Repeal of the Corn Law:'" it is impossible
that he should not do his best to accede to the demand.

It has always been stated, that the Commutation of Tithes
would throw a certain advantage into the hands of the land-
lords, or the church, or both, as they could agree to divide it.
And there can be no hesitation in closing with the suggestion
of the Northern Liberal, that it would be quite fitting and
desirable that the government (supposing it to have any honest
intention on the subject at all) should take advantage of this
to make the commutation of Tithes and the removal of the
Corn Laws contemporaneous, rather than give the landlords
anything however small with one hand, for the sake of encoun-
tering an increased opposition to taking away with the other.
But the Whigs will never do this ; they will do directly the con-
trary. They will jump at any method of increasing the dif-

YOL. II. ' 2 c

402

Effects of Abolition

ficulty of anything they take in hand. If the Northern editor
can persuade them to be wiser, he will be luckier than there is
hope for; but he will be most welcome. When anything was
said of the unadviseableness of refusing to abate an evil on pre-
tence of at some time effecting "the removal of a greater," it
was nothing of this kind that was surmised to be contemplated ;
alas for Mother Church, it was the removal of herself.

At the same time in a case of this nature, a great deal turns
upon the absolute magnitude of the object in question ; and if
individuals differ in their estimate of this, they of course differ
in their judgment of the importance of the object. Now the
absolute value at issue was stated at something like '25,000/.
a~year ; and though there is no need not to do the prudent thing
with 25,000/. a-year, yet when viewed with relation to the com-
parative effect to be produced by it in increasing the resistance
of the landed interest, it does a little resemble the charity which
should be on the w^atch to prevent a pea from being thrown in
at London Bridge, at a time when there was an inundation in
China. The writer in the Northern Magazine however appears
to think its magnitude greater, in the proportion of 25. l^d. to
Ad. ; and therefore he has a full right to estimate its effects as
equivalent to six peas and a fraction. Which of the two esti-
mates is the true one, must be settled by reference to the
grounds on which they are respectively supported. On which
it seems not superfluous to add, that the estimate at 2^. l^d.
does not appear to be supported on any grounds at all, or at
least on any that are given. No precise reason presents itself,
why the scale of soils might not have been one that should
produce 4^. or \s. And there would be no danger in asserting,
that all estimates built upon measuring the price of corn '* by
the expense of raising it on the lowest soils cultivated," are
wrong except by accident. Instead of " every civilized mortal "
agreeing in any such principle, a large and increasing number
in all countries, who know no reason Avhy they should be con-
vict of incivility, maintain openly that it is ab initio a fallacy
the mother of fallacies, and utterly untrue in the sense and
manner in which it is applied ; that it is a prEe-posterous and
entirely baseless argument, and that there is no instance in
nature of such arguments producing truth except by chance.
There is no use in trying to destroy such an opinion by hints
at what is done by all civilized mortals. Always doubt a man
in anything he seems to think indubitable ; it is a capital
rule. This is always the sore place ; no man is taken in by
what he doubts of, but always by something he thinks nobody
can deny.

But there is another reason fjr deducting from the effect;

and Commutation of Tithes.

403

which in fact operates proportionably on the whole field of the
corn-laws. Suppose the corn trade free, and men riotin<^ on all
the corn that could be found from the Vistula to the St. Law-
rence, and increasing their numbers at the rate which would
be the consequence, whatever it might be. What would be the
result to the owners of the lands which would no longer pay for
growing corn ? Devastation and barrenness, will say the corn-
law defenders. Nothing of the kind, will say the men who
look a little before their noses ; but on the contrary much
multiplication of mutton. Man was not made to live on bread
alone ; and the moment you place him at increased ease on the
important article of bread, he will put forth his feelers with
augmented zeal in search of the next important article, of some-
thing to make it savoury. As corn, for its bulk, happens to bq
one of the most easily transportable articles by sea, so beasts,
of all kinds that chew the cud and divide the hoof, happen to
be the least. There will not be the slightest practical danger,
of a glut of mutton from Odessa ; nor even of veal from Ham-
burgh entering into any serious competition with the calves of
Essex. It would be very weak to try to persuade the owners
of the poor lands that they would be no pecuniary losers ; for
of all things the weakest is to try to persuade a man in his own
craft of what is not true. But it would be no mistake to im-
press upon these owners, that they are not to be allowed to cry
out devastation and barrenness, without a discount to the utter-
most penny for the produce of their land in mutton.

The probable effect of a Commutation of Tithes on the pros-
pects as to the repeal of the Corn Law, would therefore, it is
held, be exceedingly small, and in fact very near to inconsider-
able, as far as connected with the danger above discussed. Otlier
questions there are, of much greater importance, and bearing on
the same point. For example, it would be highly advantage-
ous, if nothing hindered, that the commutation should be made
in a way that would disengage a numerous and intiuentiai
body, the clergy, from interest, or conceived interest, in the
Corn Laws. This would be done by lodging their commuta-
tion-money in the funds. The effect of such a proceeding
would be, not only to disengage them from an interest in the
Corn Laws, but to give them a visible interest the other way.
The only objection to it is, as stated in the first of the Articles
in the Westminster Review named in the outset, that the other
fundholders would not consider the Church a desirable fellow-
passenger. But there is a peculiar reason which considerably
diminishes the danger from the clergy. No orders of land-
holders except those who have the right of having their families
supported at the public expense, and fellows of colleges who

2 c 2

404

Effects of Abolition

have no right to have any famihes at all, have any ultimate in-
terest in the maintenance of the Corn Laws. It is all only in-
creasing their money income by fifty percent, and the demands
upon it for the establishment of their families by a hundred;
and this is what is in the way of being proved upon them, first
or last, to their completest satisfaction. Now the clergy in
general, are very far from being behindhand in one essential to
being prepared to receive this verity, — the families. They are
moreover for the most part either possessed of some capacity
for investigating a somewhat complicated connexion of causes
and effects themselves, or in the way of receiving impressions
from those that are. The whole case is within their reach
with vastly more ease than the First Book of the Principia',
and by the exercise of something like the same faculties of
quiet separation, comparison, and combination. There is in
fact no race of men whom it will be so easy to persuade of the
miserable final policy of the Corn Laws, as the mass of the
existing Enghsh clergy.

To return to technicals, — the intimation that

^ The dispute^ in respect of the abstract point, is one of mere words ;
they [one side] name the whole residuum of landed money produce^
after deducting expenses of cultivation, re/z/, and then say that tithe is
paid out of rent/ — p, 700.

is of no correctness. The thing asserted was, that the opponents
confounded one sense of the word rent with another, and what
w^as true of one they applied to the other. The case in reality
was of this kind. A comes into the expectation of a segment
of a plum cake ; the remainder being kept back to pay the ex-
penses of baking, or any other cause. B carries olf two-thirds
of the segment in traiisitu. A complains thereof to C ; who
replies, Simpleton, how^ can that be ; there is not so much as
you talk of, left." It may be permitted to wonder what C
would have said, if the complaint had been that B had left
none at all. But this is precisely the mistake fallen into many
years ago by the author of the Article on Taxation in the Sup-
iplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in the memorable
and never acknowledged instance of the tithe of the acre of
oarrot-seed* ; and as sheep follow^ sheep, so men are going
upon it still. Dr. Chalmers has just pointed it out! as exist-
ing (if he is rightly understood) in the last or nearly the last
Numbers of both the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review; and

* See Supplement to 4th and 5th Editions, p. 630.

t The Supreme Importance of a Right Moral to a Right Economical State of
the Community, f, 98.

and Commutation of Tithes,

405

if a later instance is wanted, it may be found (sad to tell) in
this self-same Number of the Edinburgh Magazine *. As in
the two last instances it was probably a mere oversight, there
would be nothing unreasonable in looking for some recognition
of the inadvertency. But there will no good come of Political
Economy, till men apply to it with the same habits, the same
accuracy, and the same sangfroid, with which our forebears of
the last and preceding century investigated the motion of the
moon or the theory of the tides. It takes a much greater
quantity of what is vulgarly termed elbow-grease to make a
political economist, than is commonly imagined. The pursuit
is in fact a branch of mathematics of a high order ; and till it
is considered and treated as such, there will be no unanimity.
What chance, for instance, would there have been of arriving
at the unanimity of truth on the subject of the moon's motion,
where the power had not been previously acquired of distinguish-
ing between the results of two or more sets of clashing agencies
operaiing on a common object?

An instance in point is given by the next sentence.

' It is strangely overlooked, that without tithe, a portion of that
residuum would not have arisen at ad, but is occasioned by the higher
j)rice which tithe necessitates.' — p. 700.

So far from this being overlooked, the greatest pains were
taken to impress and elucidate the fact, that tithe raises the
price of corn by a certain amount (stated at fourpence a quar-
ter), which produces " a small reaction" to a corresponding
amount on rent ; so that what is taken from the rent, is the
tithe minus the effect of this reaction. Now none of the writers
in the Philosophical Transactions v/ould have fallen into a si-
milar mis-statement on a question of natural philosophy, through
the mere apparition of an effect producing a reaction on its
cause ; and simply for the reason, that they had accustomed
themselves to consider coolly, and compare accurately, and not

* "They [the landlords] have called themselves " The class which pays the
Taxes." .... Why, the whole rental of England, Scotland, and Ireland, does not
amount to fifty millions." — State of the Country, p. 814.

Now this is simply confounding the cake that is taken, with the cake that is
left. The landlords never said that they paid all the taxes out of the rental that
was left them ; for to make that credible or reasonable, they must show that no-
body else paid any money taxes. Kut they said that they paid the taxts through
the operation of their being in one way or other deducted from the rents before
they ever came into their hands ; which clearly miijht be true, even if carried to
the extent of leavin^i the landlords no rents at all. What rea.ity there may be
in the statement of the landlords, is quite another question. j3ut there is no
natural absurdity about the statement j and to discover any, is the cake misliike,
and nothing else'.

406

Fourth Supplement

flounce about with large words of sarcasm, concerning "beads
containing the veriest elenfients of appropriate knowledge," and
"as every civilized mortal is aware," and " during our terresti'ial
pilgrimage," and the like. There is a judgment on such as
do these things.
The intimation that

* The effect of tithe is to diminish the efficiency of that check to the
rise of price, which resides in the existence of inferior land, just by one-
tenth of its natural efficiency ; or, in other words, to allow the rise of
price by one-tenth above the natural price,' — p. 700.

appears to be ex nihilo nihil. The naked fact is, that a certain
quantity of land is kept out of cultivation by tithe ; and conse-
quently a certain effect is produced in raising prices, and if
the land was not kept out of cultivation, would not be produced.
But this etFect is a tenth of nothing ; except of itself multiplied
by ten. And its absolute magnitude, — as shown by comparison
of the probable quantity of produce kept out of existence, with
the whole, — is to raise the quarter of corn by some fourpence ;
which is a very different thing from *' allowing the rise of price
by one- tenth above the natural price.''

The proposal (p. 697) that the Corn Law should be modi-
fied to meet the advantages arising to the landlords from a
commutation of tithes, — for a gain that would be found on
examination very trivial, commits the error of appearing to
recognize a right. No man who meditated taking the whole
lamb out of the wolfs jaws, would begin by offering him market
price for a cutlet.

Finally, it is recommended to all who follow after Political
Economy and ensue it, to cultivate the habit of going bride en
main, and not plunging hastily into conclusions of either truth
or falsehood. If ordinary truth be in a well, truth in Political
Economy is at the centre of the earth ; or at all events among
the lowest strata to which human eyes have had access.

Westminster Review, I April, 1833.

Art. IX. — Fourth S>jpp^emc7it to the Article on the Silk and Glove
Trades.'''' in the IVestmiiister Review for 1 April, 183 "2.

rpHE "True Sun" has given six rather extensive articles,
^ under dates between the 3rd and 8th of January 1833, in
reply to the observations made on his arguments up to the 24th
of December 1 832 ; for which reference can only be made to that
paper, as a small return for the pains taken by it in bringing
the subject before the notice of the public. On one point only

to Article on " Silk and Glove Trades P

407

does there seem to be any necessity for a distinct reply. WiiCn
an assertion of '* wilful misrepresentation" is brought forward,
there is a rather extensive interest excited to see how far the
case will be made out. What is one man's luck to-day, may be
another's to-morrow ; and therefore the matter becomes some-
thing of a common stock.

It is wearisome to be printing and reprinting ; yet it is
better than uttering what no conclusion can be drawn from.
The object in what follows, is to invite any person who is not a
deaf adder to such a subject, to determine for himself whether
there was the smallest necessity for understanding the writer
in the "True Sun" to mean what he says he did; and conse-
quently whether there was any fitting ground for an assertion
of wilful misrepresentation.

* On a former occasion, the Reviewer had observed, ^' that there is no
reason in saying a man shall be protected, while he is producing, but
shall be robbed whenever he begins to enjoy." To this, \ve replied,
that the unproductive classes had not a better right to be prott-cted,
when they begin to enjoy" than the labouriiig classes have to be
protected, "While they are producing" — that the labourinij^ classes
were not protected, while they were producing — and, therefore, they
could scarcely be expected to consent, that the unproductive classes
should be protected, in their business of enjoyment.'

' What is the Reviewer's commentary on this ?'

" In this, there is a palpable double sense. * The productive classes are not
protected' •^XhQ.i is, allowed to make the useless robbery of one another, which
is recommended to them : * why then should they consent to the unproductive
classes being p-otec^eiZ' — that is, saved from being uselessly deprived of what
they have, to see it thrown into the sea."

* We will not again dwell upon the fallacy, so dear to the Reviewer,
that a protective system is a robbery of the protective classes, by each
other — but we will observe, that the Reviewer has wilfully misrepre-
sented the sense of our expression, that "the productive classes

ARE NOT PROTECTED WHILE THEY ARE PRODUCING." "Protected"

from the rapacity of tax-collectors, not from the competition of foreign
manufacturers : — that, we expressly stated to be the sense, in which
we, on that occasion, used the teim ^'protection." The passage
stood thus : — '

The Reviewer says, there is no reason in flaying, that a man shall
be protected, while he is producing, but shall be robbed whenever he
begins to enjoy. There is no reason, we apprehend, in tolerating the
robbery of any class — but that is not exactly the question. It only
remains for us to decide, whether, under the system of wholesale
robbery, which Governments have practised so long, it were more for
the general advantage, that those who have produced, or those who
are still engaged in the business of production, should be robbed.
The free traders, be it observed, have given it as their decision, that
the balance of advantage is on the side of robbery perpetrated upon
the productive classes." — True Sun. 5 /aw. 1833.

408 Fourth Sup. to Art. on " Silk and Glove Trades^

Now in all this, who was to know that the author meant
" Prorected from the rapacity of tax-collectors, not from the
competition of foreign manufacturers and in what place is
that " expressly stated," or stated at all ? For instance, by the
words " under the system of wholesale robbery, which Govern-
ments have practised so lon^:,'' who was to surmise that the
author in the privacies of his heart meant taxation, when the
question was un derstood to be about the injustice of free trade?
When a man has let out the fact that he meant so and so, it is
possible to conceive that in these passages he had such and
such a thing in his eye ; but before an assertion of misrepre-
sentation was founded on it, it should have been proved that
the meaning had been previously set forth in such a manner
that the uninitiated w^ere bound to perceive it upon view.

The writer in the True Sun'' is so far from having a distinct
idea of what he meant himself, that when he goes to his de-
fence he does not make it, and somebody else must make it for
him. He never, after all, quotes the passage which really
contains the key to what he meant. In a passage previous
to any of those he has quoted in his own support, he had been
talking of ''the robbery consisting in subjecting particular
classes to a large share of the pressure of taxation and this
in ail probability was in his mind, when he thought he had ex-
plained that by protection he meant the absence of taxation.
But when the connexion was not visible enough to make the
author himself appeal to it in explanation of his meaning, how
was any other person to conclude from it that so and so was
his meaning? " Protection" is a w^ord which everybody is
accustomed to hear applied to the raising a trade's prices by
prohibitions ; there is no reason therefore in demanding that
anybody shall take it in another sense, without the clearest
statement of intention so to use it, — and least of all on such a
statement, as it did not even occur to the author to make refer-
ence to, himself.

Fmally, if the " True Sun'' is admitted to the fullest extent
to re-model its passages, — what sense or propriety is there in
saying that because the working classes are overtaxed, there-
fore they ought to take from certain other classes by a process
equivalent to throwing into the sea? Will mankind never find
out, that the way to remove one political evil, is not to play
into the hands of the supporters of some other ?

Col. Torvens's Additional Letters on Commercial Policy. 409
Westminster Review, 1 April, 1833.

Art. XI. — I. Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Letters on Commercial and
Financial Policy. By Col. Torreiis. — Boltoii Chronicle. — Globe,
Jan. 12, 16, 23. 1833.
2. Letters on Commercial Policy. By R. Torrens, Esq. M.P., F.R.S.
— London. Longman. 8vo. pp. 80. 1833.
rF^HE five letters cited by their dates at the head of the
Article on them in the preceding number of this Review*,
have been followed by three others. The second of these com-
mences with what will generally be taken for a complaint, that
" notice should have been taken of detached communications,
while they existed only in an unfinished series, and before the
practical conclusions, intended to be drawn, had been stated
and explained."

The answer to this must be by saying, that the notice of the
Letters arose entirely out of the author's having communicated
to the Reviewer, that he was '* going to attack the ultra free-
traders ;" which under the circumstances, was understood as an
invitation to reply, and produced the answer that then they
should either be convinced, or be stronger than belore." If
the author had any particular v/ishes as to the mode, it is to be
regretted that he did not state them at the time. To make a
running commentary on a current argument, so far from being
unfair, is giving all the advantages to the opponent. It is
enabling him to support, explain, and repair, whatever in the
earlier portions of his work may be found defective ; and is cer-
tainly the last process which any man would hit upon with
malevolent intent.

The complaint is followed by an indirect annunciation of the
fact (about which, from what has preceded, it is plain there was
neither mystery nor concealment), that the Reviewer was the
author of the pamphlets entitled True Theory of Rent," and
" Catechism on the Corn Laws," published rather more than
six years ago ; and it involves what nine persons out of ten will
consider as a plain and unmistakeable intimation, that the
author of those pamphlets took their contents from Colonel
Torrens's works upon the Corn Laws, and unjustifiably employed
them knowing them to have been so taken.

^ Though the Reviewer and myself have been for years co-labourerS
in the same field ; though we have both written rather volumi-
nously upon questions of Political Economy ; and though on some of
these questions tliere has been a singular and curious coincidence not to
s iy identity in our opinions, yet it so happened, that to nothing proceeding
from me, whether pamphlet or volume, did the Westminster Reviewer

* See p. 35i of the present Volume.

410

Colonel Torrens's Additmial

ever before directly allude. Whether the omission proceeded from
accident or from design, I never took the trouble to enquire, being
sufficiently gratified to find that the Reviewer was zealously propa-
gating doctrines which I had previously endeavoured to establish.'

^ A member of the University of Cambridge, a person not altogether
unknown to the Reviewer, and one concerning whom he evidently
entertains no mean opinion, published two pamphlets, entitled " True
Theory of Renty'^ and <^ Catechism on the Corn Laws'' These publi-
cations correct, where not original, and where original, not correct,
though not of the highest order, yet are not destitute of merit, and
entitle their author, when content to move within his proper sphere,
to the character of being, not indeed a discoverer, but a useful distri-
butor of truth.'

^ The characteristic feature in these pamphlets consists in a cor-
rection of the Ricardo Theory of Rent, which identical correction,
long before the appearance of these pamphlets, I gave to the world in
my Essay on the Corn Laws. As often, therefore, as the Westminster
Reviewer gave notoriety to the True Theory of Rent^^ and " Cate-
chism on the Corn Laws^^ or became the advocate of the correct portion
of the doctrines which they contain, I was satisfied with the indirect
and unintentional approbation thereby bestowed upon my prior publi-
cation. On such occasions^ however, my gratification was not ex-
cessive when deviating into originality, the author of the True Theory
of Rent has in that work fallen into so many errors, that the appro-
bation of a Reviewer, coinciding in and identified with his conclusions,
is but a doubtful and equivocal test of merit.'

The theory here advanced appears to be, that of any man's
speculations for the last six years, all that agrees with the
Member for Bolton's opinions is plagiarism, and all the rest
worthless because it is not. The Member for Bolton is a lite-
rary Omar, and his works are his Koran. The "singular and
curious coincidence," and the italics of the word " directly^^
are manifestly calculated to convey the impression described ;
and it is surmised it will not be denied that they w^ere intended
to do so. Now, though there is no necessity for assuming the
airs of indignant virtue, because a " co-labourer" and brother
officer, under the impression of that most unmanageable feel-
ing literary jealousy, has hazarded a hasty accusation ; there is
an evident necessity, that after a man has been charged in two
newspapers and a pamphlet with a dishonest and in fact legally
punishable action, he should tell the public plainly that the
charge is groundless. The world is so wide and the modes of
occupation in it so various, that there can be no incivility intended
by stating, that the author of the pamphlets named really does
not know one word that either is or is not, in anything ever
printed or composed by the Member for Bolton before the
present Letters. It may be his loss ; but it is the truth. The
fact is, he set out with determining that he would read no

Letters on Commercial Policy,

411

more books unless for amusement ; and he has pretty well kept
bis resolution, and intends to do it. It would be hard indeed,
if before a man was justified in publishing a pamphlet on Poli-
tical Economy, he v^ere bound to be acquainted with all that
has been written on that thorny subject since its agitation.
Every man who prints, does it at the hazard of having to say
Pereant qui ante me mea dixeimnt. In such cases, the claim-
ant has the world before him to establish the fact of priority if
he chuses ; and it can generally be done by the easy process of
a comparison of dates. But all this is very different from print-
ing in two newspapers, that another man has pilfered the con-
tents. Even verbal coincidences, if such there be, are very
weak grounds for a conclusion ; the probability on the contrary
is, that where there was dishonest intent, they would have been
avoided. Stranger things have occurred, and prove nothing.
In the case of a writer who occupies much greater space in
the eyes of the public than either of the present concerned, it
happened that there was put forth not only a coincidence, but
a double illustration in the same terms, — the chances of which,
an algebraist would say, diminish in the duplicate ratio. The
comparison of the policy of producing goods at an increased
price at home, to the policy which should make wine in hot-
houses as the means of encouraging coals and collier s, — ap-
peared about the same time in a pamphlet of Professor Senior's*
and in the Catechism on the Corn Laws, and it is not known at
the present .moment, w^iether the physical impossibility of
either being copied, could be settled from dates or not ; yet
neither of the writers ever thought of uttering his suspicions of
the other. Such circumstances when they occur, are rather
valuable as specimens how near two vessels, holding their
courses on the same chart of reason, may steer to one another.

A further peculiarity of the present case, is that the whole
corpus in dispute, it appears was *' a correction." As if one
man was not likely to make a correction, as well as another.
An error is pointed out in a balance sheet ; — " / pointed out
that error before ; therefore it is impossible you should have
known it, except from me.*'

But what is of much more importance than all this, is to
know whether any light has been thrown on the argument on
" being the entrepot of the precious metals,'' which was stated
in the last to be obscure. And here, when the objection was
that the principle could not be made out, it was a disappointing
answer to be told, that of " this important principle the author

* Lecture on the Transmission of the precious Metals, p. 2.

412

Colonel Torrens's Additional

of the article seems altogether unaware/' He had stated plainly
that it was not made intelligible to him ; and he is obliged to
admit that he remains under the same difficulty still.

In one part of the Seventh Letter the writer appears to labour
under that kind of misapprehension which is colloquially termed
*' getting hold of a thing the wrong way."

^ The objection which the Reviewer urges against this conclusion,
is somewhat extraordinary. He contends that t'ne merchant will not
consent to sell his cloth at reduced prices in South America, because,
although the commercial tnierc(>urse beiwem England and Portugal is
at an end, he will continue his trade with that country, and there
obtain for his cloth a million sterling as before. But the Reviewer
must in fairness be allowed to speak for himself. To the question,
will the cloth which was worth a million sterling, when sent to Por-
tugal to pay for wine, continue to be worth a million sterlinj?, when
sent to South America to purchase an additional quantity of gold, he
gravely replies,

" The possibility of the answer being favourable to the querist,
depends entirely upon the supposition that the merchants will volun-
tarily send the cloth to South America, instead of Portugal, when less
is finally to be had by sending it to South America!'''

* * * si: *

" The weakness of this is in taking for granted, without the shadow
of a proof, and contrary to all the experience of Christian men on such
points, that the merchants will go to Stuih America with their cloth
at all, if the result is to be, that they are to get less for it in the
end, than they might have jrot for it in Portujra!. It is like saying,
for heaven's sake, fine a man for going to sell his goods on the Surrey
side ; for if not, he will go and sell for sixpence, what he might have
p^ot a shilling for in Westminster."

Whoever looks at this with a fresh eye, will see at once,
that there was not a word of continuing a trade with Portu-
gal after the commercial intercourse between England and
Portugal is at an end. What was urged was, that the Mem-
ber for Bolton's theory involved the supposition, that the
merchants will voluntarily send the cloth to South America
instead of Portugal, when less is finally to be had by sending
it to South America than they might have got for it in Portu-
gal ; the words voluntarily" and " might" manifestly implying
the state of freedom of choice which exists before the suspen-
sion of the trade with Portugal. The question meant was
merely this, — If the merchants sent their goods to South
America instead of Portugal when they had their choice of mar-
kets, is not that proof that they would have lost by sending their
jroods to Portugal;— andean they do anything but lose, by
being forced to go to Portugal against their wills ? Misappre-

Letters on Commercial Policy.

413

hensions sometimes arise out of slight causes ; and it is not
impossible that a comma which has been inserted in the quotation
before the words instead of Portugal,-' has had some share in
the effect. Such an insertion is not to be held in contempt,
since the mischance that befell the engraver of the prophet
Brothers's portrait. The whole misapprehension will on exami-
nation be found to be on the Member for Bolton's side ; the
sounds of triumph which he utters would therefore all be capa-
ble of being turned against himself.

The merchants of the united empire say, upon the evidence
of their books, ** We find it more advantageous on the whole,
to carry on a circuitous trade with France for wine, and with
South America for gold to pay for it in, than to get wine from
Portugal. People like the French wine so much better, and
will drink so much more of it, that we find on the whole it is a
better trade to deal with France than Portugal." The Member
for Bolton proposes to make them a new source of profit, by
putting a stop to their trade with France for wine ; and then,
he maintains, they or some of them will gain from some process
connected with the price of gold. The merchants are requested
to l(;ok over the arguments on both sides, and sea whether the
Member for Bolton has made out his case.

When the Reviewer represented that " nobody, except old
debtors, has any interest against a fall of prices arising from an
increase in the value of gold, and this interest is balanced in the
aggregate, by the counter interest of the creditors," he uttered
what everybody knows to be literally true ; and the object of it
was to say, that these effects are all, and that any further effei'ts
from alterations in the value of gold, of the nature of those
maintained by the author of the Letters, are imaginary and
unreal. The statement that a merchant cannot gain less or
more than the customary rate of profit upon the capital which
he employs, is true, but beside the mark. It does not prove
that the quantity of his capital employed, and consequently of
his profits at a given rate, is not capable of reduction. Propose
it to any merchant in the city ; tell him that the plan is to cut
him off from the trade he finds most advantageous and confine
him to that which he finds less ; and then comfort him by say-
ing that he cannot gain less or more than the customary rate
of profit, and see if he will be contented.

The Sixth Letter is chiefly remarkable for the earnestness
with which it maintains the fact, that by removing the prohi-
bition on a foreign manufactured article, no manner of good
will be done, except saving the difference of price to everybody
that has anything to do with using it. As if anything more was
wanted. And if there are people in England willing to act on

414

Musical Periodicals,

no better ground than this, why should the chance be so despe-
rate, of at some time findinj^ somebody in France to do the
like ?

The Eighth Letter appears to be undeniable, on the sub-
ject of the Corn Laws. But is every man to be charged with
stealing the Member for Bolton's thunder, who lights on the
conclusion that the Corn Laws are an evil ?

In discussions upon literary subjects, the use of scornful and
injurious terms goes only to create a prejudice against the user.
There is not the smallest necessity for ** co-labourers" in the
Political Economy Club to tell one another they " chuckle and
cackle over their intellectual abortions." It is not imperiously
commanded, that Fellows of the Royal Society excuse one
another by the habit of *' performing the operation of writing,
without performing that of thinking the well-known fact
being that we all do the best we can, and " look for the hard
words in the dictionary." Nor is it indispensable that of men
of the same, or of any rank, in a profession which values itself
on frank and generous courtesy, one should tell the other that
" the notice which has now been taken of him is more than
sufficient ;" and least of all when the whole has been done by
invita,tion. The inference from demonstrations of this kind in
a disputant, is sufficiently known to be proverbial ; and as the
Member for Bolton's theory of wealth v;ill undoubtedly find its
way into the House of Commons, the interested on the ether
side are forewarned by them where to look for the reply.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1833.

Art. XliL — 1. The Harmonicoti, a Monthly Journal of Music. — Lon-
don. Longman and Co.

2. The Giulianiad, or Guitarist's Monthly Magazine. Nos. I, 11,
and III, for January, February, March, 1833. — London. Sher-
wood and Co.

^T^HE days of grands coups de lance are over. Everything is
now done by here a little and there a little ; and periodical
publications, like timely showers, translate the wilderness into a
fruitful field by gradual instillment. Music, the youngest-born
of heaven's benevolence, who toils not neither does she spin,
but only fills her father's house with smiles, has, as is meet,
no want of service here. It is excellent to be great, glorious,
and distinguished in arts or arms ; but the very phrase implies
that this must be the lot of few. The leaders in war must always
bear a certain ratio to their followers ; and not more than six
hundred patriots can by possibdity be wedged into the House
of Commons. There wanted something that all might join in

Harmonicon — Giulianiad,

415

without crowding ; and above all, there was one portion of the
human kind and that the gentlest, cut off from most of the
vulgar objects of ambition, which had great need of a field for
heaUhful exercise and blameless rivah-y. Such want is supplied
by music ; and this circumstance alone would suliice to make
the art a favourite object of utilitarian care.

At the head of the Ust of periodical works, for extent of in-
formation and comprehensiveness of aim, necessarily stands the
Harmonicon. He is the chef d' elat-major of the musical forces.
Nothing is too much for him, or too little. He can tell all
operas, that were performed at all seasons, at every court from
Petersburg!! to the Tagus. He knows the Professor in Den-
mark, who plays the best fantasia in | ; and commemorates the »
first public concert ever performed in Australasia. Of all mu-
sical speculations he is the great repository, from the gnarled
mysteries of the scale, to the pin of a clavichord. Finally, he
has the reputation of being the only English power that could
ever rule the microcosm of the Opera, — Panaque, pastoresque,
Dryadasque puellas.

If the Harmonicon is a chief of staff, the next is the leader
of a small manipulus or company, which he is anxious to make
the most effective its magnitude will admit of. And he mani-
festly has the root of the matter in him. The guitar is an in-
strument even now not comprehended in this country. People
cannot find out, that it is an orchestra in little, a miniature
painting of le donne, i cavalier, Varme, gli amori. Its forte
is the picturesque; meaning thereby the presenting of pic-
tures, — des tableaux. It wants force, as a miniature wants .
acres of canvas, but is not the less a painting for that. A
young lady with her guitar, is neither Mr. Harpur with his
trumpet, nor the Petrides with their horns ; but it does not
therefore follow she is nothing. She may be compared to an
artist who for some reason has no great depth of shadow at
command ; the keeping may be more difficult, but it is not
impossible. The great countervailing power, is in the intimate
connexion between the performer and the instrument, giving a
command over the strength and quahty of tone, which can
scarcely be equalled but on the violin, and then there must be
at least a trinity of performers to approach to the same effects.
The authors of the *' Giulianiad" (a crabbed name) have proved
that they understand the thing. They are the first or nearly
so, that have shown they comprehend the bounty of Providence
in the guitar. On many points they go so close to what has
been impressed in the present utilitarian organ, that it
may not be misplaced to state that there is no community of

416

Musical Periodicals,

source. They are altogether a second voice in the desert,
returning a responsive halloo to the other.

The music in their two first numbers, throws more light on
what the guitar is meant for, than could be got by the pillage
of a music- shop. All that bears the name of Giuliani is
first-rate. Publish no tinkling; but give some organ sounds;
some recitative in harmony; let us hear the evil power, the
Ahriman of the stage, grumbling in discords on the bass, and
then the heavenly influences come to the rescue in sounds like
those which told the magician of old time his guardian spirits
were arrived. Since Giuliani is a voluminous composer*, he
is himself a mine. But those who have mastery on an instru-
ment can improvise, — much more write fluently what others
have invented. What is wanted, is that they should open the
portals of music to the student of their art. Why not begin
by giving four pages monthly of some well-known opera, The
Freyschutz for instance, from the overture to the conclusion ;
in such form as to be easily taken out and united ? Musical men
have a. considerable degree of community of goods, and much
picturesque music is impressed into the service of the panto-
mimes. Can no man invent a Harlequi?i Voyageur or other
trivial machinery, which should enable him to string together
in such order as should give most mutual relief, all that the
stage has of grave or gay, ridiculous or sad ? From this go
higher, and to the highest. Give the grande Opera, recitative
and all, but cutting down freely where it would be wearisome,
leaving in fact no more than shall give distinctness to the rest;
and afterwards, sacred music. The Hallelujah Chorus in the
hands of Huerta, would be like the last sounds before the an-
gels grew too small for mortal ken ; the clown that would de-
spise it, would giggle at the sight of the Lord's Supper on a
gem. Save a sweet female voice, no earthly instrument would
sooner bring tears in " I know that my Redeemer liveth ;'' its
powder depending on the resemblance to the expression of men-
tal emotion, supported by a moderate use of the ornament which
is often so misplaced in singing, but is necessary to assist sounds
not singly possessed of sostenuto tone. Instruct arpeggios to
draw an organ's power from short-lived strings; give a chant,
a mass, a funereal service in little. Bear still in mind, that
magnitude is relative, not absolute ; that music is not in noise
but concord of sweet sounds ; and that the lowest class of ama-
teurs are the elderly gentlemen who count kettle-drums, and

* 148 Opere; published by Richault, Boulevard Poissonniere, No. 16, Paris.

Ireland.

417

go into fits at the crash of a certain number of fathoms of
fiddle-string.

Another point of advantage in the guitar, is that it is in
reahty the most scientific instrument in use. None other, so
inevitably leads to acquiring some knowledge of the innate
springs and causes of harmony. A pianoforte is a box of pre-
pared sounds from the shopman, from which no art can extract
any idea of origin or relation. The guitar is six monochords,
if the Hibernicism may be allowed ; and the dullest perception,
though unprompted, can scarcely fail to arrive at some ideas of
cause. It was time for some stimulus of this kind ; it was dull
climbing to a school-girVs pitch of lesson-playing on the spinet.
Much is to make out in music yet ; there is the theory of tem-
perament to overturn ; and the singers and violinists have yet
to know the ground they stand upon, and force the players on
pipes and psalteries to follow and not to lead. All that tends
to this end is a good ; and all that leads either old or young to
ask why certain lengths of strings make music and others do
not, has a tendency to it which nothing can conceal.

Westminster Review, 1 April, 1833.

Art. XVI*. — Cruchley^s New Map of the British Isles, Engraved
and published by F. G. Cruchiey, 28, Luflgate street, St. Panrs,
Lonaon.

IITHEN the people of an extensive country are irritated and

' ^ full of complaint, — which in their own phraseology is always
being oppressed, though of course no man will be found to own
to the cognomen of oppressor, — one of the first things a con-
siderate individual does, is to look into the map. The collection
of old almanacs out of which mankind makes new^ ones, —
history, — points strongly to the fact, that no numerous people
was ever oppressed in perpetuity. There are constant causes
in operation, to equalize the struggle ; of which it is enough
to mention one, the continual desertion from what the oppressor
tmsts to as his allies, and siding wiih the sufferers. In these
times nobody is to be trusted to work oppression ; there is no
telling in what strange place the opposition m.ay break out ; it
may show itself in the cantp, the court, the field, or the work-
shop ; even the pulpit is not entiiely to be depended on. Every
man that now-o'days insists on riding a hobby-horse of wrong,
curvets on the crust of a volcano;— and might see the fire

* This Article was circulated and sent to the newspapers, before the Third
Reading of the Irish Coercion Bill in the House of Commons, which was
on the 29th of March, 1833.

VOL. II. 2 D

418

Ireland.

shining through the cracks, if his brahis could direct his eyes
between the hoofs of his Bucephalus.

Now here is a larger island and a smaller, — bearing to each
other in rough numbers about the proportion of three to two, —
so that their strength in union is as five, while their strength
in opposition is as one. And the governors in the larger coun-
try, after having been raised by the popular aid to a triumph
over their bitterest opponents, can find no way of using their
newdy given power, and no means of letting off the exuberant
energies they are aflOiicted with, but imitating the practice of
their enemies in making a *' raid" against unhappy Ireland.
Where was the necessity ; what was the urgent motive ? Could
not any given minister have amused himself with a battue
somewhere else instead ? What manly reason will they give,when
history holds them up for httle boys to point at, why nothing
could serve them but making a set at Ireland? Ireland was
going on, not very well, but very much as usual. It had been
fully agreed, that the time was come for removing some of her
causes of complaint, — and it was on the very promise and en-
gagement to do this, that the present ministers had been raised
upon the shoulders of the people. It was a thing settled and
determined, that Ireland had been scourged and manacled into
madness; the Tory doctors fairly gave her up, for the more
they coerced the more she raved, as vi^as only right. The Eng-
lish people, thou2:htful, sensible, and good, called out to try
conciliation, and brought forward a new race of doctors with
that very view. They said, " It is plain coercion only does
harm ; manacles throw the patient into convulsions; there has
been much ill-treatment, — you cannot wonder at it. Try some-
thing kind. Do a little that may look brotherly." Whereon
say the board of Machaons, — " We will begin ; — we will con-
ciliate, but it shall be in a straight waistcoat ; — we will be bro-
therly, but we will have the patient on the iioor; — depend on
us for the best intentions, but we must let off our foolishness
our own way."

When men follow a course of this kind, it is always on the
presumption that they can and shall coerce the sufferer to the
end. Presumptions of this description have in all ages been
the seed of independent nations. Whenever a great revolution
is to take place in the political relations of masses of men,
nature is put to the expense of turning out some half dozen of
rash gentlemen to be dry-nurses to the change. There is no
preventing this ; on the contrary it is a reason for seeing in
all a superintending Providence. It is the order of nature ;
which cannot be an evil. And the way in which these agents
of nature's progress attain to their desired result, is always by

Ireland.

419

miscalculation of their means. They trust to something sup-
porting them, that turns out neutral ; or something being neu-
tral, that turns out against them. For example, in the present
instance, the assumption is, that the people of England would
have a great objection to the independence of Ireland. If query
why, — among other reasons, because Ireland would probably be
republican. Now both these are rotten sticks, — mere props
for old women in pantaloons, which will break and pierce the
hands that lean on them. It is very true that the people of
England do not desire the establishment of republican govern-
ment either in Ireland or here. But why ? Not because there
are not great masses of them that are conscious that by the
irresistible extension of knowledge, to republican governm.ent,
in name or in substance, all in the end must come. Not because
they are not deeply conscious of the inbred and inseparable in-
firmities of the monarchical principle, and the many ways in
which it opposes the reasonable connexion between the end of
governing and the agents. But singly for the reason that
makes a man desire to live in an old-flishioned and smoky
house, rather than incur the risk of expending tw'ice the value
of the difference in palling down and rebuilding. It is not the
o^y^c^, that they fear : the going the object. And the
same in respect of Ireland. There is no considerate and inde-
pendent Englishman, who does not know, that Ireland has
in all ages been a warren of the aristocracy's, and by that very
fact an injury and loss to England. There is none that does
not know, that if Ireland had at this moment a government as
totally separate as that of the United States of America, the
two countries would be in a situation to enjoy all the good
derivable from their geographical and physical conditions, and
avoid the evils of their present state. They have had centuries
of evidence, that the aristocracy of England are utterly incom-
petent to the task of governing Ireland, in any v>7ay that does
not render the connexion an abstract curse. But they fear a
greater curse behind. Knowing the strength of parties, the
animosity of interests, — they dread the process by which the
abstract blessing of the separation should be brought about.
They weigh evil against evil ; and they decide that the smaller
evil, if the ministry could allow of it, would be to continue as
they are. In short they think that no prospective good would
be worth a civil war. But if the ministry make a civil war in
gaiete de c6B«?% what becomes of these objections then? If
civil war there is to be, why should not the English people
wish to see it take the advantageous turn instead of the dis-
advantageous ? Is there no impressing on ministerial imagi-
nations, the difference there is between that attachment to an
2 D 2

420

Ireland.

existing state of things which depends upon the dread of con-
test, and the attachment that is left with men after the contest
has been forced upon them ?

The military situation of Ireland is probably nearly this; —
That if a contest were commenced in which free access was
given to the relative strength of the two parties, the shock from
the organized force actually in the hands of her assailants,
would be such as Ireland would have no physical chance of re-
sisting. Rut if anything should happen to blunt the operation
of that first shock, and give Ireland one clear year for prepara-
tion at home and for the operation of cool reflexion in the
masses of the English people, — the chance of ever overpowering
Ireland by force, would be just where that of overpowering
America is ; — the Honourable Napper Tandy or anybody else,
might put on his bag and small-sword when he pleased, and
prepare for presenting himself at the English court as Mr.
Adams did. The reasons are strong, why both sides should
avoid the contest ; yet these are the risks and chances a few
aristocratical persons insist on running against. And because
they are backed by a shoal of shallow men of good estate, who
would believe in any green-bag necessity a ministry chose to
detail to them, and consent next month to any mode of creep-
ing out of the danger they had hatched, — they feel bold and
cheery, and think the trampling a gallant nation of eight mil-
lions under the iron heels of courts-martial, the natural'st thing
on earth. They know full well, that if they were to attempt
such practice with the English people, the country would run
a muck against them, — mothers would bring forward their sons,
and charge them to come back no more, till the ministers were
quaking for their heads like the prisoners of Ham. But because
Ireland is a smaller country, they think the ill must be sub-
mitted to. In this they are in one sense right ; for the theory
of resistance has not been so often discussed, without coming
to a pretty general arrangement on the circumstances which
justify it. For a weak nation to resist, is ^ fault, and therefore
a crime. This connexion of things may not hold good inva-
riably ; but it is the allowed theory of political resistance. But
how foolish is that government, which puts itself into the cate-
gory of injustice, in reliance on its strength.

Another ground on which they possibly calculate, is that the
Irish could never agree among themselves, and consequently
one of two halves would be on their side. Bat this is not to be
trusted in too much. National independence is a tempting
thing ; which is a proof it is a great good, where overpowering
obstacles do not oppose. Men will sacrifice a great deal, even
of their prejudices, for the sake of the brilliant chances held

Ireland,

42t

forth by such a consummation. The probability is, that as
relates to internal politics, two parties in Ireland would be
nearly balanced. The inference thence drawn in Ireland
might be, that one should seek the aid of England to cut the
throats of the other ; but they might also happen to find out,
that it was for their mutual interest to treat each other hand-
somely, and set up the orange and green in loving union. The
position of the Irish church revenues might seem to be an ob-
stacle ; but suppose Ireland should take the freak, of applying
these altogether to setting up her new housekeeping, making
such settlements only as should satisfy existing occupants, and
agreeing that all sides should pay for their own divinity as they
may want it. There is nothing in this so improbable, as to
make a man leave his mouth open on the chance of what may
not come in.

If the measure of the talents which bring these perils on the
country be desired, it may be found in the miscalculation of
what the legislature (which is not the country after all) would
endure and what it would not. To have shown their teeth, for
the purpose only of proving that they could not bite, — to have
given the exact impression of what they would do, and up to what
particular point it was checked by what they dared not do, — is
a folly few have committed since the giants of John Bunyan.
All the other proceedings are of a piece. Not the slightest
assurance is there, that after they have carried their bill of in-
tlictions, they shall ever carry their bill of conciliation at all.
Men with the wisdom of a parish clerk, would have seen that
the way to prevent mischief was to ensure the conciliatory
measure first, and let the other follow : or at all events take
care the two were contemporaneous. It is strange if such leaders
do not find a pit to tumble into. When soft heads and timid
hearts in Parliament cojigratulate themselves on giving powers
to such trustworthy ministers, what reasonable assurance have
they that they have not been spreading abed for their enemies
to roll in ? Suppose the Tories throw out the bill on the Irish
Church, as why should they not; — what nook will the ostriches
thrust their heads into for their salvation afterwards? Human
affairs are not carried on in this way. If any of the members
of the government sigh for glory, or otherwise possess an irre-
pressible activity, they should be sent fox-hunting, or presented
with a new Manton ; but not allowed to make eight millions
of human creatures their field of fame. Why will well-meaning,
good sort of people, never take advice ? If they would have
asked the Enghsh republicans, at least the moderate ones, —
men who have neither fear nor shame in avowing their prin-
ciples by any kind of light,"— /A^y would have said to them.

422

Ireland.

" You have just got the Reform BilL Whatever you do, avoid
stirring first principles without occasion. Keep things as quiet
as you can, and so will we. You know the bargain was to try
the Reform Bill, audits quiet, easy-going results, to the utter-
most ; and we are here to keep it. But do not you raise any gigan-
tic questions. Try to soften things gradually, and give us the
substantial good of a republic under the forms of monarchy.
You know we do not care a great deal about the matter, and
should on the whole perhaps rather enjoy the playinji out the
play the other way. But still, we are " wae to think" on the
confusion that might arise. Keep a soft rein, and see if the
world will not go on without. If you will not, we must act ac-
cording to the throws that turn up ; but w^e do not want you to
cog the dice. Keep well when you are well, if you have wit.
There is plenty to alter and amend, to keep you in employment
for the average life of man ; you will not be so silly now, as to
invent some crusade as the Tories did, by way of putting off
compliance with the people's demands. Think what the Tories
got by the invention; and think what you will get by the in-
vention in the end. If you were to do such a thing, you would
be very likely to give a fillip to the whole future course of
history. Men may hereafter talk of the vast change in the
face of Europe, which arose out of the conduct of the Whig
ministry after the Reform Bill." You have a very rotten house
over your heads ; tread gently, and do not dance sarabands in
it more than needs. Besides, you do not know what may be
coming. The French government exists only from quarter to
quarter ; and you have no notion what a muster there might be,
if a change in France were to happen in the nick of time for
setting republics " two and indivisible'' smirking at one another
across the Irish Channel. Look too at your people at home. Have
not your landlords brought you to the very eve of an agrarian war?
Nobody will insure you upon Change, that you shall not have a
Jacquerie within twelve months. In the West Indies, three
years have been assigned as the natural term of a tyranny ;
you may have something there to do, either with master or
with man, that would fall in awkwardly with your crusade.
Gentlemen, good gentlemen ! honest, well-meaning, round-
sterned gentlemen ! reflect how pleasant it is to lie in bed on
a rainy morning, and not have to mount one of your own
coach-horses and ride over brake and fell to get your brains let
out by some stalwart rustic with a scythe-blade, or be shot
through a hedge with an old pistol with the lock tied on with
packthread since last rejoicing- day. Hunt, eat, drink, shoot,
speak, fiddle, sell fatted calves, do anything to amuse yourselves
except getting up some strange question that will be too much

Ireland.

423

for you. Your enemies are keen dogs, — a bull-dog to a turn-
spit to you ; nothing supports you but your homely usefulness,
and the affections of the roast-meat-loving public ; — they will
play you some dog's trick, as certainly as ever you play the
fool. Nature never meant you to be magnanimous ; it meant
you to be good. Go on in that course, and defy the devil and
his works ; but if you forget yourselves and take to the tricks
of those you have turned out, depend on it that all men every-
where will look out in hope and expectation of seeing you
get some prodigious overthrow. There will be ballads made
about you ; there will indeed. Now don't have ballads made
about you, when you might just as well be quiet and live re-
spected by your neighbours."

Assuredly, if a man had endeavoured to guess the most un-
likely things, he could not have bit on the idea that the Whigs,
after all they had done and said, would have been for going

colonelling" in Ireland. He might have fancied the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury pouring out the unknown tongues at Mr.
Irving's meeting-house ; or the Member for Oldham circum-
cising himself on the eighth day after the Jew Bill was brought
into parliament. But he never would have devised, that the
eloquent and pacific Whigs, — the men who had so constitutional
and long-standing a horror of the triangle and the walking
gallows made of commissioned shoulders, — should have been
for disgracing their earliest course by resorting to such beg-
garly elements of exploded tyranny. The facts 2^yq all against
them ; nobody wants their courts. The ordinary civil courts
are going on with their occupations just as ever. It is not
courts that are wanted, but witnesses. If the military courts
are to do anything not done by the others, they must make the
evidence as well as the decision ; they must perform the ope-
ration demanded by the Babylonian legitimate, who wanted to
be told '*his dream" as well as "the interpretation thereof."
If the "Rules and Regulations, Hoyle's Games, and the Army
List" have taught the captains of fifties to perform this feat,
it will be a new and ministerial road to knowledge which no-
body had thought of. But unless they can do this, there is no
more pretence for employing them at all, than for sending a
spurred and whiskered bench into Yorkshire. The truth pro-
bably is, the Whigs have made a cake and somebody must eat
it. They have concocted with great pains a laborious measure,
and though the plums and the ginger have been pretty well
picked out in committee, somebody must swallow the dough
and the suet. It is an awful thing personally, to stand in this
position to a ministry.

One inference the British people must make from the whole,

424

Ireland.

IS that they want a Constitution. Some years ago they bad
something talked of as such ; but the people of England do not
want a bad Constitution, The old mischief being removed,
they now want one for good. A Constitution, is a code
of laws the governors dare not break. It is a bound hedge
assigned to the church-wardens and office-bearers of the
state, by the sovereignty of the community saying to them
' Hitherto shall ye come and no further." As it is, English-
men hold all they have, by the discretion of a few hundred very
indiscreet gentlemen. The aim and object of a constitution,
IS manifestly to embody the great lessons of history, and correct
the vagaries of men acting under momentary fears and instant
impressions, by introducing elements derived from the world's
larger periods. Everything is a crisis, to a member of the
sitting parliament ; no man ever held a situation of such re-
sponsibility before, or was so well entitled to make all reasons
bend to his necessities of state. Now the grand warning of
extended experience is, that men who are allowed to do certain
things, always do wrong. No man looks, for instance, on a
suspension of the Habeas Corpus at any period gone by, but as
an instrument for doing mischief which might have been pre-
vented if the government could not have suspended the Habeas
Corpus. The ministry says, '* We cannot go on without." The
unflinching decision of History on which is, "Then you ought
not to go on." Some governments cannot govern without tor-
ture, — some without po^/yacifo laws ; all bad governments
have a morsel of some kind which they roll beneath their
tongues, and plead they cannot go on without. The verdict of
mankind, not uttered by hourly installments, but given every
now and then in a voice like that which shook the Bourbons
out of their tapestried halls, is that they know no reason vjhy
they should. The defect is in supposing that it is for the good
of mankind they should go on ;— -in not seeing that the legiti-
mate inference is, that they ought to be changed for those who
can do better. Constitutional liberty, means having a govern-
ment that shall be obliged to govern within certain rules. If
you say you cannot, — dismount and make room for those that
can. imagine a man saying, My dear courser, I cannot ride
unless I may have a bitt that will pull you on your haunches
every time I twist my little finger ; I must have a pair of spurs
d feu d^enfer, or I cannot be responsible for keeping in the
saddle ; a whip of course, is a necessary of life ; you must be pre-
pared too to amble with your legs tied together, whenever I may
wish the same ; in short you must give up the totality of your
habeas corpus whenever I desire ; it is on these terms alone, that
I feel myself competent to take an airing ; you must agree to all

Ireland.

425

this, or you are an undone horse." If men were horses, such
arf^ument might do ; hut it lamentably overlooks the difference
between equine and human reason. Why should men go
without law, because their delegated lawgivers cliuse to be
lawless ? Is it a reasonable confidence in their lawgivers, — any
more than it would be reasonable to leave it to the steward of
an estate, whether there should be an estate at all ? The case
is plain, — the Whigs have undone the bag; — We ivant a Con-
stitution. The world at large is only beginning to grope for
knowledge of what a Constitution is. Most seem to think it
means a form of government; and in England circumstances
have not been such as to direct attention specifically to the
difference. The case may be altered now ; at all events the
times are favourable for throwing light upon the question,

England, then, is just entering on that phasis, in which
most of the continental nations have preceded her, of feehng
for a constitution ; — that is, for a code of rules it shall not be
permitted to the acting government to break. Whether this
can be effected without a crisis, or without waiting for a crisis,
is what time only can decide. But the actual government
has decided to draw men's minds to it in the strongest way
that can be done by human art. It is plain that English as
w^ell as Irish, hold the administration of civil law by sufferance.
It only requires a ministry with a point to push by martial
law, and by martial law it will be pushed. The interest of
Englishmen clearly is, that a ministry which cannot carry its
point without martial law, shall have its Descendas before it puts
its hobby into that movement. Our forefathers had constitutional
restrictions, and so must we. Theirs might be adapted to their
own times ; but they w^ere obsolete, gone-by, and harmful in
ours, and therefore they were wisely superseded. We are left
therefore in the gap between the pulling down a bad consti-
tution, and the setting up a better ; — not by raw, rash acts of
guess-work, but by turning the public mind for some half dozen
years next following the Irish invasion, to extending, first, the
knowledge of the gap, — next of the thing wanted to fill it, —
and lastly of the means of substantially obtaining what is
wanted. It is not enough that there should be a vague horror,
of martial law and similar extravagancies. Experience has
shown in all countries in the present state of Europe, that it is
in the nature of a representative government to push forward
numbers of individuals, of large fears and narrow views,— mere
gobemouches ef all kinds of terrors, — men nursed in the lap of
peace and afl^ieiace, and ready to decree by acclamation any
measure of injustice, which they think will act as a blister on
some distant part of the body politic and secure their own, —

426

Ireland.

quiet cool men, ready to order a civil war any morning as they
munch their breakfast, if the minister tells them it will con-
duce to the safety of their supper. Such men work admirably
on a parish bill, — are the hope of their country upon a question
of drainage orinclosure, — but utterly incompetent to be the de-
positaries of the personal freedom of their countrymen, and the
guardians of the Habeas Corpus. In fact the Habeas Corpus
should have no guardians, except the bodies that it guards.
A proposal for touching it, should be an act of resignation of
the existing government. Look forward some score of years,
and think what will be the world's opinion of a country, where
the law was that law was suspensible, — where the denial of
justice was part of the required powers of an administration for
the time being, — where it was possible to hear and think of
such monstrosities as making a law that no man should have
remedy against the actors under a given Act. There is a large
gap in the ideas of a society where such things can be dreamed
of. And for what end, but to enable a minister to do, what
everybody ought to wish undone ; to gratify some personal
ambition, some restless energy, or at best to secure the exe-
cution of some darling wrong ? If the people of England go on
not finding out that they are blind and naked, it can only last
till some daring scheme against themselves opens their eyes to
their condition. The landlords, for instance, have martial law
in their view before they will give up the Corn Laws ; they fat
their yeomanry horses for that very chase. By their Irish bill,
they cut off the fellow-feeling of two-fifths of the united coun-
try, against the hour of England's distress ; — a deed of general-
ship on a large scale, and worthy of agrarian genius. With the
same tameness that the gross and pursy juste milieu see Ire-
land invaded, they would see Yorkshire, if the same wisdom
told them it was necessary, and their particular toad-stool was in
a southera county. There must be an end of this '* tyranny
avowed f for it is avowed, — the records of Parliament are
there to state, that the Whigs came forward and avowed it was
a tyranny and a gross one, and for that they liked it better.
There has been no shuffling ; the thing has been laid down in
its enormity. Evil may be our good, as well as the Whigs' ;
the chances are all the greater that the English people may
think of laying it to heart.

What would be thought of military leaders, who, after being
brought forward by the people on their shields in an hour of
crisis, and then invited to go forward and show the way to
reaping the fruits of victory, should say *' Stay a little ; we
must commune with the enemy, and get his help, bitterly to
coerce certain battalions of you. We must try to please him ;

Ireland.

427

and if \Ye propose more than we follow up, you must under-
stand that it was to appear willing in his eyes, and prevent his
point-blank refusing to co-operate. The secret of directing an
army, is always to have the enemy in the plot. It tends to
peace, and the orderly settling of things ; as you will see."
This is precisely what the Whig leaders have done. They know
that a people at large is a slow agent ; disunited, and each part
easily induced to act against the other ; a very tool for tricking,
except in those rare moments when the strategic spirit rushes
on every private of the force in the shape of one irresistible
cry of" Forward." The salvation of nations is, that governors
always miscalculate this point. It comes on them like a thief
in the night ; when the good man of the ministry least dreamed
of its arrival.

The ministers are possibly mistaken in thinking there is as
little feeling out of doors for Ireland, as in the houses where
the liberties of the country are made and unmade. The English
people have viev/ed the Irish as their fellow-labourers, and in
fact the turning-point in their Reform. Numbers of them are
filled with recollections of Irish gallantry and Irish good
fellowship ; things are not where they were, when an Irishman
was a hobgoblin of the stage, a sort of Helote, whether in the
higher or lower classes, produced to flatter English superiori-
ties. The ministers had forgotten the steam-boats, when they
went back to Tory times for precedents. They overlooked the
host of Irish writers who had as eff'ectually linked the feelings
of Englishmen with the merry misery of the Irish peasant, as
with the grave endurance and stout resistance of the Scotch.
The strong and general feeling in England is, that all Irish
misery springs from wrongs. Those who have seen Ireland,
know it ; and those who have not, take their word. An in-
solent ascendancy, of just such a kind as if the Normans
were prancing about in chain mail to this day in England, and
backed by an insulting church establishment of the same nature
as if Catholicism had been established by Colkitto's " myr-
midons in defiance of the English nation, keeps the vast majority
of the Irish people in the situation of slaves looking to all
points of the horizon for any aid that will break their fetters.
If something is not done, a fleet of steam-boats from the United
States w^ill some fine morning be the Euthanasia of the Irish
struggle.

The ministry in fact have staked their existence on the dice.
If heaven sends them all sixes, they may get on ; but if there
comes the smallest check, they will discover the rottenness of
the position nothing could hinder them from taking. They
have gone on against the loudest avowals in the House of Com-

428

Ireland,

mens, that the occasion justified resistance far more than their
own applauded case of America. No such phsenoraenon was
ever exhibited hefore ; a people was never pushed upon a civil
war by a Flouse of Commons, one side of which took glory
to itself for the monstrosity of the tyranny, and the other
virtually avowed the duty of resistance. Such an intensity of
weakness, was reserved for Whiggery. What will come of it,
those that live will know^ ; but it is a glorious prize for the active
'* movement" party ; it is nuts for the zealous republicans, here
and everywhere. The more moderate ones would have gone
down upon their knees to prevent it ; but what can they do, —
can they arrest the course of fate, or pretend to stay the optimism
that is in the world ? Submission w^as made for man ; and if
Providence have chosen the Whio:s for leaders into the pro-
mised land, there is nothing left but bowing to the dispen-
sation.

How small is the use of history, — to those who have neither
ears to hear, nor eyes to see. No statesman, how^ever bad,
perhaps ever failed to speculate upon a niche. Laud with his
Thorow, and his fellow- workman Strafford, undoubtedly in-
tended to occupy a lofty station ; and so they do, with the
trivial accident of losing their heads by the way. Much of the
merit of a measure is in its exit ; and those who put on their
harness, are not to boast as those who put it off. The ministry
have chosen to harness themselves against poor Ireland, and
will most probably succeed in their immediate object of putting
down ; but they have laid the foundation of changes, of which
they must have a long telescope to see the end, and which are
very likely to be as anti-Whiggish in their termination as their
worst enemies could desire. It is plain the Whigs are one of
three not very unequally balanced parties in the country. One
of these was their natural enemy, and must continue so ; not
even hostility to the people, could appease the wide enmity and
leave the Whigs in possession of the spoils of place. With the
other party they have now broken, as far as regards any sub-
stantial confidence cr faitii. The Radicals, (who are the masses),
must play out the game, stepping on the shoulders of either
enemy that will oppose the other, and trusting to the good use
of opportunities to resist them both. The position is at least
an interesting one ; and since the Long Parliament, the rea-
sonable friends of popular rights never stood so fair before.
They have all the benefit of the game, without the responsi-
bility„ Eight millions of people have been taught to look on
them, as those that would have helped them if they could.
The represented may have been slack, but the representatives
in Parliament have not. They have stood well to their work,

Ireland.

429

and some good knights have won their spurs, to be used with
better chances another day. If the Irish are wise, they will
not despond : still less break off communion with the cause of
freedom in England. We are all in the same net, and there is
nothing to be done but gnaw a mesh asunder where we can,
without asking whether Jew or Greek is to have the instant
benefit. There is no use in getting into a passion with a nation ;
there are good and bad in all, and the good do the best they
can, and the bad the worst. Strength is in union, — and in the
eschewing of that basest of all policies, the true test of enemies
in disguise, which props up one evil by descanting on the non-
removal of another. Drive the pick-axe wherever it will go best
and farthest. He that shakes slavery in the West Indies, gives
it a push in the half-way house of Ireland ; and commercial
freedom at Liverpool, will re-act on the equality of creeds
throughout the empire.

It may be urged that many of these considerations are too
late ; though it was no fault of this Review if the ministry
would not wait for the First of April. They may be too late or not ;
it is uncertain as all things are. In one shape, however, they
are not too late. If the ministers have thrown the die in the
legislature, it is not absolutely impossible that they may still
possess some influence over the execution of their own laws.
They cannot be expected to have much ; for as they never had
the vigour to put a new garrison into the Horse-Guards, they
must look for everything from that source to be directed in the
spirit of bitterest hostility. If there is the ministers' man, there
will be the Horse-Guards man to look after him. V/ oe to the
individual, v/ho shall have any ambition to serve again, and
shall do the Lord's work slackly in Ireland. A mark against a
man's name in the list of proniolion is not so easily rubbed off,
as that it should be incurred for other men's convenience. The
army have no scruples upon such influence ; they do not do it
in ill intent, but in innocence. It is not long since the writer
of this was president of what is called a " General Regimental
Court- Martial,'' in Ireland ; and a superior officer directed
him to " Tell the Court it was the General's particular desire
that this man should be tried by a General Regimental Court."
And on the hearer's looking what was taken for non-compre-
hensive, the words were repeated in the benevolent tone which
is meant to give a stupid man the chance of understanding at
twice, what he fails to do at once. Now the meaning of this,
in plain English, was, " Tell the Court it is the General's
particular desire this man should be transported if they can ;"
for what is called a General Regimental Court has the power
of transportation, and what is simply called a Regimental

430

Ireland.

Court has not. Now suppose this president had refused. In two
or three weeks, he had to appear at an inspection before the Gene-
ral that *' particularly desired ;" who had it in his power to do all a
man prepared, can do to puzzle another that must act upon the
moment;— who could demand of him to perform everything
that was obsolete and therefore not practised, and everything
that was new and therefore imperfectly known, — and who upon
the slightest failure, could make a remark against his name
which should attach to him for life. In two or three months,
he had to present himself to the other superior officer, to request
him to certify that he was a proper subject for promotion ; —
was it likely that he should offend him by any useless violence
of virtue ? And all this was done in no ill intent. There was
no malice, no cruelty designed ; it was the simple exertion of
what military persons think the fairest of all agency. The actual
agents were the most regular and orderly of men ; pure military
automata, that would not commit themselves by an irregularity,
if they knew it, though it was to save a nation. But how many
Irishmen will be sent before the Whig courts-martial, with a
recommendation from the General commanding ? The cilicers
likely to be appointed after all the cutting-down that has been
practised on the Bill, may not be precisely in the situation above
described ; but they will be in one closely akin to it. If one
sharp confidential man be put forward by the Horse-Guards
into each court, there is an end of the independence of all
except the martyrs. There is no doubt that military olncers
may decide with great impartiality when there is nothing to
bias them ; but the question is, whether they will decide so
when there is, — and wiiether they are not, of all living men,
those who if they act independently in circumstances of trial,
must do it at the greatest expense of individual prospects and
well-being. When evidence is brought before the House of
Commons of the evil deeds of courts-martial in time past, it
is quashed on the ground of pain to relatives. It will be much
more painful, to the relatives that are to come. There is won-
derful nicety about what is done and over; and equal care-
lessness about what is still to do. It will be vast consolation
to the relatives of those who are to be transported for being
out of bounds, that Sir Edward Crosbie's relatives were spared
the pain of hearing his murder commented upon with indig-
nation !

Where a larger country holds a smaller in a legislative union,
it clearly ought to do one of two thmgs, — either make the
union comfortable to the smaller country, or quietly give it up.
All else is tyranny ; and tyranny does not last ; and what does
not last, is sure to fall. Men cannot and will not go on in the

Ireland.

431

old throat-cutting way ; and so the Whigs will find. There
must be reason, there must be some aim for the public happi-
ness, and for such causes men will fight. But they will not
fight for the convenience of a ministry : or not fight long. The
ministers may hold out "to the death but they may die by
themselves. The fighters may be willing to fight ; but who will
keep the fighters ? Two-thirds of the British people believe
the objects for which Ireland is deprived of law, to be decidedly
opposed to their own immediate interests. They not only do not
believe in the necessity, but they beheve against it ; they believe
that if the truth were told, the necessity would be the other
way.

The great comfort in all this, is the certainty that final good
will come of it. It is all only stirring the soil, for the great
harvest of human advancement. Who knows, but it is destined
to advance the cause of rational government by half a century ?
All great goods have sprung from great ills. The evil is great
enough ; and it only remains to see whether there is the usual
connexion with the consequence.

A curious contrast is all this time presented, between the
ardour of the ministry to resort to extreme measures m Ireland,
and their placability v/here the Crown and people of Great
Britain are really suffering wrong and insult. A race of colonial
bullies whom nothing but the interference of the British admi-
nistration prevents from being crushed like cockroaches by
their own negroes, may insult the head of the government and
organize associations for illegal violence upon their country-
men, and the ministers as meek as mice shall be arranging
with the home branch of the cart-whip dynasty the price at
which they will consent to abate their nuisance. The whole
horse has been paid for by the British public by a poll-tax, and
when the question is of substituting working in harness for
drawing by the tail, the ministry is in negotiation with the bar-
barian for paying him the price of the horse over again as the
price of his consent. The slave-owner, whose slave and all
he has, have been bought for him once out of the pockets of the
British public, — is to be told he shall be paid the price over
again, on condition that he will consent to employ free labour
afterwards. Why is not he ratlier charged with the difi'erence
between the expense of slave labour and of free ? And why
is not he asked to lay down the cost of protecting him from
the just retribution which his own obstinacy has brought almost
upon his head ?

How much money has been paid by the British labourer and
m.anufacturer, to support slavery already ? Let us see a balance
sheet, in which this and the other items named shall be put

432

Ireland,

down ; and then show how much is owing to the men of the
cow-skin. Will not the Irish members help us in this ? Cannot
some confidence be put in them, that they will stand up in a
mass in defence of the general empire upon this point, and trust
to the gratitude of the whole community when the time shall
come for showing it ? Let them consider well, how strongly
this would tend to combine the general interest with theirs.
Let them relieet in what numerous classes, hostile it may be to
them hitherto on many points of belief or prejudice, this would
quash the feeling of distrust, and substitute the confidence of
fellow-labourers in one great cause. If the Irish members will
come forward as one man, and stand in the gap between the
English people and their enemies on the West-Indian question,
whatever may be the event they will not fail in one point, — ^the
securing an adhesion to the cause of Ireland, which first or last
will vastly overbalance the puny efi^orts of the cabinet to raise
themselves in the eyes of their enemies by the depression of a
gallant people. All good feelings will join and link themselves.
The hearts of the legislature " thrill at Poland but considering
" the condition of the country," "the distress," &c. they cannot
reconcile it with their consciences to grant any public money to
assist the persecuted Poles. They will have no such scruples
with respect to the persecuting West- Indians > At this mo-
ment, unless all surmise is wroog, they are has^gling with them
to know the lowest price at which they will sell their nuisance.
Gould not something be done upon this point, which should
carry the name of Ireland into the far-olf divisions of the globe,
and give her one more link with the everywhere rising cause
of man and of humanity ?

Programme to the Westminster Review for 1 July, 1833.

THE Whigs have done as little good as could be expected,
and rather more of evil than could have been foreseen.
As every man counts one, the question with many a man at
this moment is, whether he shall count it for the Whigs or for
their rivals.

It is quite true that our oj^cr^r^ have done anything but steer
a course. They have set a sail forward, and backed another aft ;
and in everything exhibited the imbecility of people who are as
much afraid of the success of their own side as of the enemy's.
This is all very bad ; but might there not be a worse ? Is not
the fact that we the poor negros, are all this time drifting towards
our own coast of Guinea, and every day diminishes the chance,
that though the other faction should get the lead, they will ever
succeed in getting to sea at all ? Would it be poHtic to help

Property Tax.

433

to bring in the party, whose first operation on feeUng settled,
would be to put us all in irons below, and then carry sail like
devils for Barbadoes ? Would this mend our chance of escap-
ing from the paws of the carcase-butchers in the end ?

It is matter to reflect upon. There is many an important
interest at this moment driving before the wind in the right
direction, that would be brought to anchor in a moment if the
Tories were masters of the deck. It is true, that their hour of
distress would come ; and perhaps some frivolous gain might be
made, of what they would give in the way of grog to the crew
to keep them in good humour. But it will be time enough for
this when it comes of itself. In the meanwhile Tory principles
and expectations are falling to leeward, as fast as ever the Whigs
cannot hinder. The Tories see clearly, that their pear instead of
ripening, is growing more rotten daily. The Radicals, such as
they are, had more need try to get into some order for working
the ship themselves, than help to bring back the ancient breed of
buccaneers.

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1833.

Art. I. — 1. An Attempt, to show the Justice and Expediency of substi-
tuting an Income or Property Tax fo7' the present Taxes, or a part
nf them ; as ajfording the most equitable, the least injurious, and
(ujider the modijied procedure suggested therein,^ the least ob-
noxious Mode of Taxation: also, the most fair , advantageous, and
effectual Plans of reducing the National Debt. — London. Hatchard.
1833. 8vo. pp.428.

2. Observations occasioned by the Motion in the House of Commons,
on the 2Q!h of March, 1833, by Geo. E. Robinson, Esquire, for a
Select Committee, To consider and revise our existing taxatiofi,
with a view to the repeal of those burthens which press most heavily
on productive industry , and the substitution of an equitable properttj
tax in lieu thereof.^'' Addressed to the Landed Proprietors of the
United Kingdom. By Richard Heathfield, Acf'ountant. Author
of'' Elements of a Plan for the Liquidation of the Public Debt."
— London. Longman. 1833. j p. 20.

TF there should alight some day from another sphere, a being
intelligent but unacquainted with the ways of men, — a Mar-
tial or Mercurial Telemachus, voyaging for the future benefit of
some planetary Ithaca, — he would be superhumanly amused
and edified with the way in which the " earthies, of the earth,"
contrived to levy the contributions the sublunary tongue calls
taxes. A few turns with bis Mentor through the nearest
custom-houses and manufactories, would convince him that
VOL. II. '2 E

4'34

Property Tax.

according to the constitutions of this world, an extra tax on any
incorporation of use or pleasure whether of foreign or domestic
origin, had the effect of inducing the use of some substitute
instead, — with the loss in the first place to the users, of all the
convenience in price or otherwise, which in the natural state of
things would have led them to take the other, and with the loss
in the second place to the makers of the thing displaced, of all
the traffic and employment which would be transferred to their
sorrow from themselves to some rival craftsmen. If, therefore,
there was algebra in the traveller's father-land, — and who shall
say there is not, — it would be as plain to him as anything in
what men call Wood and Simson, that the result was minus-
2a in the shape of losses to some, and plus a in the shape of gam
to anybody else,^ — leaving the total result minus a as ihepretium.
artis to the inventors. And on looking abroad through atleast one
country not the lowest in its own esteem for wise, he would dis-
cover that the entire system was of this mystery compact; —
that the Whole Duty of Man as a tax-layer, w^as supposed to
consist in effecting the greatest public loss and injury, which
the combined efforts of each of the members of the society to
secure then- own share of the wrong should make it practicable
to attain. He would see all orders of the race he had fcdlen
among, engaged in full pursuit of this worthy object ; and if he
had coQie sooner by as many revolutions of his planet as would
make some two of ours, he might have seen a government
maintaining itself principally by holding out f(U*sale the scraps
and portions of this public injury, for the substantial currency
of support and comfort in return.

If he asked whether the two-legged creatures who acted thus,
carried the same prhiciple into then- other concerns ; — whether
the rule of the country encouraged the cultivation of food by
stipulating that the raiser should try to destroy a double quan-
tity in the hands of somebody else, or if every man that filled
up a puddle was obliged to make two elsewhere : — he would
find to his surprise that they did not ; the wonder heing that
people who did it in one case should have sense to avoid it in
the other, or having the last, should adhere to the primitive
practice in the remainder. And much would be the interest
among his region's learned, when he laid the fact before its
newest Institute as proof that mental power was abstracted by
the moon ; and with many an unearthly shrug, and shaking of
the head perhaps beneath their shoulders, would they com-
pare it with the customs in their own limpid atmosphere, where
doubtless taxes, if such there be, are levied either on what the
]>ayer has,, or on consumption of all kinds by one single ad

Property Tax.

435

valorem rate,— with as much certainty as burthens, if the cli-
mate affords what seems a horse, are attached to his back and
shoulders in preference to his heels, his nostrils, or his gullet.

In this state however tve are ; and can no more cure it by
taking thought, than change the position of our planet or alter
the dimensions of the year. Man was born to folly, as the
sparks riy upward;— to suffer by other's unwisdom or his own,
and most of all by the joint-stock foolishness where each clubs
his own in aid of the common mass. If resistance were at-
tempted, great would be the army of the defenders ; first and
foremost, the tenth of the concerned who really gain upon the
final dividend of wrong ; next, eight-tenths out of the other
nine, who have a clear conception of the little savoury bit of
fraud they roll under their tongues, but none of the price which
on a conclusive estimate they pay for it ; and on the other side
would appear the scanty band of brothers, the lii tle church,
who think a stolen pint not worth a quart ; — who dream that
governments were meant to secure the general interest by
checking private wrong, and will do so when wise men get to
the top of them. But till this last happens, it is not to be ex-
pected that governments should be zealous to abandon the po>
sition which they hold as Grand Carvers of the public mischief.
There is considerable temptation in holding the key to every
man's pocket, and in receiving the courtship of all who desire
to insinuate themselves therein, with the homage the others
are obliged to pay in turn. It would be a weak head that
did not foresee fierce opposition to any radical amendment,
— horrid debates, and Tiber frothing with sophisms small and
great. It will be a piece de resistance, whenever the time
comes ; where the toughness of the meat is only evidence of the
necessity there is for getting through it, and for putting on the
whole armour of hungry men determined not to starve for other
men's satisfaction. When, therefl^re, the rich and the in-
terested endeavour to keep tilings as they are, reply that all
this only proves that they are w-eil and you are not ; and set it
all down as reason why you should go on to your mark with
that perseverance which either brings the mountain to the
ministers or ministers to the mountain, and makes modern his-
tory one record of the conquests of the community's interest
over the gloses of the v/ise and the bluster of the brave.

The real objection to a tax on Property or Income, — the ope-
rative source of the practical hostility to either, — is the convic-
tion that it would remove the chances of dishonest gain from
the existing modes. The outcry is like an outcry against the
abolition of lotteries ; consisting of the lamentations partly of
the contractors who make an assured gain thereby, and partly
2 E 2

436

Property Tax.

of the ignorant or feeble speculators who see in the fact of pay-
ing 200,000/. to divide 100,000/. an open source of profit to them-
selves. Every man calculates upon his luck ; there is a plea-
sure in the possibility of gaining without desert, which over-
balances greatly superior probabilities of loss ; but it does not
foilovi'' that a sane government, acting in behalf of a commu-
nity the whole of whom at all events have not eaten of the
insane root, is bound to act upon the motive. The thing really
at stake in the question of a Property Tax, is an amount equal to
what Blackwood puts upon his page as the aggregate of the in-
terests concerned against free trade ; — including the results of
the Corn Laws, if not there before. No man supposes or be-
lieves, that a Property Tax will ever be permanently co-existent
with other forms of taxation ; like the serpent of the Jewish
hierophant, it will end by devouring the rest. It is perhaps in
some sense fortunate, that a property tax involves certain pe-
culiar sources of unpleasantness, which as being equally felt
on the most modified application of it as on the most universal,
will always end in a demand that it shall be co-existent with
none else. Let once a property tax introduce its toe or little
finger, and all the jobber taxes must move otf the scene with
as much velocity as is consistent with moderate warning to the
dishonest interests involved. Men will never pay a property
tax in part, and be plagued with excise and customs and im-
posts upon everything by which it is possible for individuals to
make gain by the plunder of the community, for the remainder.
They will as soon go to the trouble and expense of juries and
judges of assize, and bargain that these shall extend only to
alternate hundreds, while the rest shall lie open in quincunx
order, for perpetuation of the needful crop of felonies through-
out the land. The opponents of a Property Tax know they are
fighting for a great stake ; and the other side know it too. It
may be not yet ; but it will be. All that is to be done now, is
for the people to put it into the things that are to be ; and as
surely as chopping fells the tree, the time will come.

The arguments against a property tax, as collected from one
of the publications at the head of the Article, and attributed to
men in the situation of whiggish ministers, are

That a commutation of taxes would be attended with much partial
inconvenience.'

^ That consumption would not increase, as a consequence, because
the incomes of the opulent classes would be reduced in such manner
as to leave consumption, as to those classes, unaltered.'

' That by taxing the opulent, the employment of the poor would be
less.'

Property Tax.

437

* That a property-*tax would drive property from the country, and
must be considered, exclusively, as a war tax ; — and — '

' That the graduation of such a tax upon an ascending scale, wouhl
tend to and terminate in the equalization of all properly.' — Observations
8^c. J). 4.

The fragment in the way of a tail, attributed to Mr. Poulett
Thomson, may be omitted as only the repetition of portions of
the rest.

The first, or *'that commutation will be attended with incon-
venience," is like announcing that to quit an inn where there
are fieas, will be attended with the trouble of going across the
street. The fact will be admitted on all hands ; but what the
majority of inquirers will desire to know, will be what was
the total magnitude of the insect persecution to be escaped
from, what the precise importance of the elTort to be incurred,
and which way and what the final balance of the whole.
Nobody ever wanted to change the mode of taxation in pure
gaiete de coeur ; the statement v^ as. that men paid tlie neces-
sary taxes two or three times over, and thought it worth while
to go to some trouble to save the difference.

Next, that " consumption would not increase ;" the quare^
" because the incomes of the opulent classes would be reduced
in such manner as to leave consumption, as to those classes,
unaltered." This is the argument which tells the community
" consumption would not increase" by putting down highway
robberies on Hounslow. Who cares whether it does or not ?
the petition to the wisdom of the ministry, was that they would
take measures for causing the consumption to be for the benefit
of the right man. The complaint of the people is, that the
honourable classes cheat, to millions of times the amount they
cause the vulgar classes to hang for ; and the answer attributed
to government is, that what is stolen is '* consumed ;" — that as
sure as the Sixteen-string Jack of the higher orders lays his
hands on a purse he spends it; — and that for what they so
receive, the herd are to pray to be made thankful. This
is the trick negative ; the trick positive comes next.

That by taxing the opulent, the employment of the poor
would be less," is the vulgar fraud of telling the ignorant they
are interested in the dishonest expenditure of the rich. As if
it was not before every man's eyes, that the expenditure and
employment must be of the same amount, if the money w^aslefr,
in the hands of the right owners. Why are men to be put down
for talking nonsense in Cold-Bath Fields, if ministers utter
such bassesses as these ? A most thinking people are to be
told, that their interest is in paying the taxes for the rich,
that the rich may spend the difference ; — that their well-being
depends on getting their share of what has passed through

438

Proverfy Tax,

the bowels of the wealthy, as Portuguese mendicants fiaht at
the door of a convent for their portion of soup meagre. This is
what is found charged on the Whigs, as their political economy
in the middle of the nineteenth century.

That a property tax would drive capital from the country,"
amounts to the assertion that it is for the interest of the com-
munity at large to retain in the country that portion of capital
which mmt be coaxed to stay there by 'paying the taxes for the
owners. This is evidently another edition of the " Sixteen-
string-Jack" delusion. " Pay the taxes for the rich, and see how
you will be benefited by their vouchsafing to spend their money
among you V/hether there may or may not be a portion of
capital, which would remove if forced to pay a fair share of the
taxes, is of small importance so long as there are people to fill
up the place. Fancy a shopkeeper in one of the great streets
of the metropolis, threatening his brethren of the street that
unless they promised to pay his parish rates for him, there
should be one grocer less in the row. Imagine a man bullying
upon this point ; and think how the parish would laugh, at an
argument thought so fitting for the atmosphere of the House of
Commons. Are there not twenty aspiring young grocers in the
Ward, whose hereditary capital is dwindling away for want of
the good will uf a shop to put it in ? What a lout it would be,
that should bring forward a proposition for such payment at a
vestry meeting.

But the thing may be viewed on another side yet. Is there
any chance for such openings for capital being made at all f
The proposition is, that paying twenty per cent in the aggre-
gate in&tead of forty, is to drive away capital ; — that getting rid
of a system which causes two, if not two dozen, talents to be
thrown into the sea for every one that finds its way into the le-
gitimate expenditure of the public purse, is to cause wealth to
ilock abroad to escape the consummation. There might be
capital which fled to the continent on the establishment of the
Horse Patrole ; but it is presumable that something more than
the mere fact is necessary to prove the removal of the capital or
capitalists an evil.

The last and grossest fallacy of all, is the one which declares
that the <iraduation of such a tax would be the equalization of
all property." Look on and. see how hard the rich will die, when
they are brought to the post to make them do justice to the
poor. What particular meaning might be in the minds of the
propounders of this proposition, is not easily determined. If
they meant that to tax a man of 1000/. a year one-tenth, of
2000/. two-tenths, of 3000/. three-tenths and so, would leave a
man of 10,000/. a-year nothing at all,— they stooped to the

Property Tax.

439

meanness of trying to deceive the imperfectly informed by
affecting to reply to a proposal they knew nobody had ever
dreamed of making. And if they meant anything else, they
ran in the face not only of visible justice, but of acknovv'ledged
and experimental principle. In the worst taxes ventured on
in civilized countries, recognitions may be discovered of the
principle that taxes are to be laid, not upon what a man has,
but what he has to spare ; else why the agreement to tax what
are called luxuries, in preference to the necessaries of life ?
When Mr. Pitt taxed windows above seven, no man discovered
that this was confiscation ; nor any curator of the public wel-
fare threatened that the Dukes of Northumberland and Bed-
ford would be found splitting their family mansions into domi-
ciles with six windows each, or that properties would be subdi-
vided to assume the appearance of a voluntary poverty set forth
in the exclusion of the light of heaven. This caution was for
the Whigs. The Edinburgh Review trembles at the idea of
men who have not the blessing of being poor to their hands,
counterfeiting poverty, and ridin^r dog-horses that the public
may say There goes a miserable devil it would be vain to
think of assessing to the property- tax." As if the desire of
men, in the first place to be well carried, and in the next to
be gallant and trim in the eyes of their neighbours and their
neighbours' wives and daughters, was not nature's sufficient
bulwark against any defalcation in the public welfare from
such a source.

The simple principle of a graduated scale of taxation, is that
he who has little can with less propriety be asked to live upon
nine-tenths of it, than he who has much. At the same time
let it be diligently kept in mind, that all attempt to argue the
case as if any extreme or violent principle had been urged on
the acceptance of the government, is premeditated fraud. The
strongest proposals that have taken a tangible form, were in
truth scarcely sensibly removed from the limit indicated by
the comparative unprofitableness of levying taxes on the lower
incomes. Take, for example, the Westminster Review of nine
years ago, when it was the organ of at least as high-flying
radicals as is possible since, and was checked by no consi-
deration or likelihood of immediate applicability; — and what
was the raving of the wildest of its imaginations? Truly that a
man of a hundred and fifty pounds a-year should be exempted
from taxation, and other incomes pay at a fixed rate upon the
excess above 150/. This was the confiscation which was run-
ning in the heads of the Radicals, and against which the Whigs
were born to protest*.

* Westminster Review for Jan. 1824. Art. Instrument of Exchange. (See Ap»
pendix in Vol. HI of the present Work.

440

Property Tax.

The questions of a Property Tax or Income Tax have been
here put throughout without distinction, because they really
appear to be in the main only modifications of the same prin-
ciple, and as such susceptible of debate and comparison after
the principle is acknowledged. Some men's income is from their
property, and some men's property is in their income. A strong
prima facie impression may be indulged in, that, tricks apart,
the difference between them is very much like haggling whether
a man shall pay a half per cent annually upon the hundred
pounds which is his principal, or ten per cent upon the five
pounds which is his interest. The plea set up against taxing
temporary incomes, would, if there was the proper graduation
in the scale with reference to total value, be either a mistake or
a quibble ; and *as the objection has the appearance of being on
the popular side, it is the business of a popular work to disavow
it. That the annual income of a land proprietor ought to be
subjected to a higher rate of taxation than the same annual
income from temporary industry, as, to take the favourite ex-
ample, the income of a surgeon, — may be matter of demon-
stration ; but solely upon the ground that the smaller total
value ought not to be charged the same absolute per-centage as
the great. If the landed proprietor and his successors are seized
of 1000/. a-year for ever, and the surgeon and his successors
for at the utmost fifteen years, — it is nevertheless true that the
one is charged for ever, and the other only for fifteen years,
which if a uniform rate was just, would be as it ought to be.
But one possesses a property intrinsically worth, it may be,
20,000/., and the other 10 or 11,000/.; and the value of their
total payments should not be in the same proportion, but at an
increased rate for the larger property. The injustice is in submit-
ting two properties of diff'erent total values to the same rate
of taxation generally ; but the injustice is there, and not in
the fact that the smaller property has not the due allowance
for time on the supposition that a uniform rate is fair. The
opponents of a graduated scale, therefore, advance the very
fact which goes against their own case. It may be true
enough that the surgeon ought not to be charged at the same
rate as the land proprietor ; but it is simply because it is
universally unjust that the small property should be charged
the same per-centage as the great, — which is the very point the
propounders of the objection have undertaken to deny. They
can see that the uniform rate is unfair where the inferiority of
value arises from time ; but they cannot see that the unfairness
is the same, when it arises from any other cause.

The two points principally played upon in support of the
existing system, are that men have an unconquerable aversion
to making direct payments to the tax-gatherer, and that the

Wheweli's First Principles of Mechanics.

441

popularity of a Property or Income tax is founded on the ex-
pectation of throwing" the hurthens of the state on the rich.
The first of these, when stripped of its feathers, is reducible to
the fact ih^i cceter is paribus men had rather pay a tax without
knowing it than with. But it does not follow that men had
rather pay forty pounds without knowing it, than twenty with ;
still less that the difference may be carried to any imaginable
extent. The general feeling is, that taxes are a mystery and
a kind of congenite evil, which it is for a man's happiness to
try to know and think as little about as possible, as he would
do with a scrofulous tendency in his fomily. But once make
him comprehend that there is balm in Gilead, and that he may
reduce the evil by a half or two-thirds by looking it boldly in
the face, — and what was apathy before will be changed into
eagerness, and not a word more be heard of the unconquerable
aversion to submit to any direct curation of the mischief. The
second point thrown out is a mere false liirht. There is no
evidence that the idea of throwing the burthens on the rich,
either is or has been any lars:e ingredient in the desire for a tax
of the nature proposed. That to a certain extent it should
have entered, is the natural consequence of the zeal and ability
the rich have shown to take care of themselves, and the un-
flinching cruelty with which large classes of them live, and will
persist in living till driven fiom it by bodily fear, on the life's
blood of the industrious classes. But the great, splendid, and
rational object, has been and is, the desire of putting an end to
the system of taxation, which has held up the public loss for
sale, to anybody who would pay half the value and the remain-
der in corrupt support to general misgovernment. It is with
this conviction the industrious portions of the comrxiunity ought
to imbue themselves ; cherishing always a lively faith that the
non-industrious are their born enemies, and will stick at no
fraud, violence, or misrepresentation, that shall hold forth a
probability of continuing their wrongs.

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1833.

Art. X. — The First Principles of Mechanics ^ with Historical and
Practical Illustrations. By William Whewell, M.A. Fellow and-
Tutor of Trinity College. Author of *^ An Elementary Treatise
on Mechanics" and " A Treatise on Dynamics." — Deighton;
Cambridge. Whittaker & Co.; London. 1832. 8vo. pp. 118.
With plates.

npHE most striking characteristic of the fluxion of eternity

which forms the actual present, is the intense desire for
sound reason in all things, — in fact for Radicalism, — which
without limitation of subjects or in spite of limitation, pene-
trates everywhere like the fine dust of the tropics which nothing

442

Whewell's First Princijjles

short of hermetically sealing can exclude. Men \oi\^ went on
under an intense desire to know facts ; a desire as natural as
that of the famished mariner to be acquainted with biscuits,
before deeply interesting himself in either the chymistry or
the phvtology of their production. But when this was partly
satiated, they turned with fresh vigour to chew over again the
root end of the liquorice-plant of knowledge, and delight them-
selves with the sweets which in the hurry of their eagerness
had been left unexpressed among its fibres. It was highly
useful that porters should carry their loads aright, and sailors
hoist-in beer and water with a full knowledge of the powers of
their tackle; but it was also very meet and tilting that phi-
losophers should have the m.ost perfect apprehension of the
rationale of all these proceedings, even though it ended in
no striking alteration in the existing practices, and no confuta-
tion of the rules of thumb already in operation among man-
kind.

And here the principal point wanted, is to have a clear settle-
ment and understanding once for all, of what it is the mathema-
tician wants, and wherein he differs from a collector of facts and
authenticator of the testimony of the various John Nokes and
Mary Styles who might be procured to give their signatures in
evidence. The best instance in illustration, is probably the ce-
lebrated one of the Keplerian and Newtonian discoveries. Kep-
ler, as is vv^ell known, being an individual peculiarly furnished
with the bump of hunting for analogies, turned out from pain-
ful comparison of the contents of astronomical tables, the very
complex and remarkable fact that the respective times of revo-
lution of the different planets and their distances from the sun,
bear such a relation to one another, that the squares of the
times of revolution of any two planets are to one another as the
cubes of the distances. And Newton, by a curious coincidence,
came forward at the same time with his discovery derived from
laying thing and thing together (which is what the learned
call syiithesis), that on the supposition that the force by
which bodies in the mundane system were found to be impelled
towards each other as in the vulgar instance of a stone falling
towards the earth, should universally vary inversely as the
square of the distance from the body towards which the im-
pulsion takes place, the precise relation stated by Kepler be-
tween the times and distances of bodies revolving round a
centre towards which they are impelled, would be the conse-
quence. There are few who cannot see the distinctness of these
two discoveries, and their perfect independence of each other.
Kepler's theorem might have been true for ever, and the know-
ledge of it disseminated to the greatest imaginable extent.

of Mechanics,

443

without of itself throwing any further Hght upon the cause.
And this would have been equally true, if instead of being
on an abstruse subject and one which few except astronomers
think of troubling themselves with, it had been ever so intimately
connected with the common affairs of life. If from the moment
that the schoolboy was buttoned into his trowsers till the time
of his being stripped for bed, all nature had with one voice
called out to him that the squares of the periodic times were as
the cubes of the distances ; — if it had been a thing he could
not eat without, drink without, breathe without knowing and
feeling that by it he moved and had his being ; — this would not
in reality have one jot reduced the value of Newton's demon-
stration, though there would have been no want of persons to
express their wonder at any man's taking trouble to demon-
strate a thing so palpably self-evident.'' Their defect lies in
the inability to distinguish, between seeing what none when it
is shown them can fail to see, and rendering a reason. The
ihw<r may be as evident as "self-evidence" or anything else
can make it : but the reason of the thing is not therefore the
more evident, but in some sort the less, in consequence of the
perpetual difficulty men feel in distinguishing between palpa-
bly constant effects and their causes.

An object, then, to be striven after by philosophical mathe-
maticians, is to tighten the distinctions between the different
sources or origins of belief, on the strength of w^hich proposi-
tions are presented to be received. The two grand divisions
appear to be, into inferences from experiment, and inferences
from demonstration. For though at first sight it might appear
as if the last-named class must be entirely resolvable into the
former, — and though it may perhaps be proveable that no in-
ference from demonstration can be totally and absolutely stripped
of some portion of reliance on experiment for its basis, —
yet this portion may in some instances be made to bear
so. minute a proportion to the whole, that its comparative
non-entity may betaken as the characteristic of a distinct class,
and in the vast number of mixed cases which arise, separation
may usefully be made of the parts which respectively depend on
the two sources, in the same manner as if the non -entity in one
class was absolute. Simple geometry, is the instance in which the
references to experiment, it is apprehended, may or ought to be
reduced to something hardly distinguishable from non -entity.
That we exist, — that we possess the faculties of sight and touch,
— that things tangible have extension in some or all of the rela-
tions of length, breadth, and thickness, — that some of the objects
of touch have their particles with difficulty moved among them-
selves or are what is called hard, — and that all or any of these

444

Whe well's Fii^st Principles

objects are capable of being moved if no extraneous obstacle
interferes, — may perhaps in one sense be producible as what are
ne^'^.essarily inferences from experiment. But it is in a very diffe-
rent sense from that which would be conveyed, by the man who
should rise up and say he knew by experiment that in all
isosceles triangles the angles at the base are equal to one
another ; and in this sense it is, that simple geometry, if it "were
rid of the evident maculce which are seen adhering to its sur-
face, might be declared with strictness to be independent of
experiment. Algebra, which is arithmetic, might subsequently
be placed in the same class : for it need have no references but
to the early conclusions of geometry, limitable in fact to the
conclusion that things equal to the same are equal to one
another, and its immediate corollaries. In the higher branches
of mathematics, which are the application of geometry and
arithmetic to physical phsenomena, a greater or less degree of
combination of the two sources of evidence necessarily takes
place ; and one of the improvements which may be suggested
as lying open to the active mathematicians of the present day,
is the establishing a more constant and practical distinction
between what is derived from one and from the other.

The way to distinguish is to use terms ; and the way to dis-
tinguifjh well, is to find out the terms that are best. Axiom is
a word in bad odour, as having been used to signify a lazy sort
o^petitio principii introduced to save the trouble of inquiry into
cause; and besides, it signifies nothing, hut ivorthiness of slW
possible descriptions. A Physical Law inferred from experi-
ment, or if it were permitted to put the whole into one term
fabricated from the Greek, a Peirasm,^' would appear to de-
scribe v/ith precision all such propositions as that "equal forces
acting perpendicularly at the extremities of equal arms of a
lever to turn it opposite ways, will keep each other in equi-
librium and that " if one of the forces be greater, the arms
remaining equal, — or if one of them act at a longer arm, the
forces being equal, —the greater force or longer arm prepon-
derates." At the same time it is desirable to confine the term
to cases which do not admit of being followed by any For
the appearance of that conjunction intimating that there is
something which might have been transported into the class
of demonstration.

The Aristotehan distinction of motion into natural and w;2?2a-
^wm/ (see page 8), of which the first kind was permanent but
the second had always a tendency to cease, is a fine specimen
of the fallacies of those simple young people the ancients. Pre-
sented as a reason, it amounted to saying that certain motions
were perpetual because they were found to be perpetual, and

of Mechanics.

445

others were temporary because they were found to cease. Or
to give it the most favourable construction, it might be con-
sidered as an observation of the fact, that man cannot arti-
ficially impress on any substance a motion which shall be per-
manent.

The Section on *' The First Law of Motion*" suggests a
remark on the rather obsolete subject of " a perpetual motion."
It may be assumed that the mechanical instruction of the age
is sufficient to put an end to all pursuits after a perpetual
motion, that are dependent on ignorance of the principle that
action and reaction are equal. But there is no demonstrable
impossibility in the discovery of a perpetual motion, arising from
the application of some agency constantly renewed by the act of
nature. The nearest approach to this existing, is probably the
case alluded to of a water-mill where the powers of nature
continually carry the fluid back to the regions from which it de-
scended. If magnetic attraction had been of such a nature as
to be intercepted like light by the interposition of a screen, it
would have been easy to construct a perpetual motion ; and that
it is not so intercepted, is unconnected with ordinary mechani-
cal principles. It therefore does not seem to be past possibility,
that a natural agency should be discovered capable of produc-
ing a perpetual motion ; though it may be freely conceded that
none such is at present known. On the contrary it may be
held very probable, that a perpetual whirligig is among the
toys destined for the amusement of posterity.

In p. 13 there is importance in the degree of illustration
given to the fact, that as it was erroneous to believe that a body
in motion had of itself a tendency to resume a state of rest, so
it was an equal error to believe that a body at rest had a certain
definite tendency to remain at rest, and would not be put in
motion at all unless this tendency was overcome. The ancients
manifestly believed that a certain definite force was necessary
to move a heavy body at perfect liberty, at all ; and they seem
to have taken for granted that the force required depended on
the weight. The evidence of this is in the enunciation of the
problem preserved by Pappus, " Having given the force which
can move a given weight along a horizontal plane, to find the
force which can move the same weight along a given inclined
plane." In which the mistake is in supposing that on the hori-
zontal plane, if friction could be removed, the smallest force
would not be sufficient to put the heaviest body in motion. The

* ' A body in motion tvill go on moving uniformly in a straight line, except so fa^
us its motion is affected by the forces which act upon it.' — First Law of Motion,
p. 10.

446

"WhewelVs First Principles

motion maybe slow, and it may be a long time before it can be
caused to accumulate or increase to a given amount. But there
is no such thing as resistance to motion in toto ; as may be
proved by putting the heavy body in a situation where the re-
sistances from foreign causes shall as nearly as possible be anni-
hilated, as for example suspending it by a long cord.

In the speculations concerning Forces on a Lever (p. 19)
fresh specimens are introduced of the simplicity of infant an-
tiquity. Aristotle is produced saying, that the reason why the
power moves the weight more easily in proportion as it is farther
from the fulcrum, is " that the end wdiich is farther from the
centre describes a larger circle ; so that the [smaller] body
which moves the other, will be transferred through a larger
space." A ])abe*s reason, if ever such thing was ; in fact a
mere observation of a concomitance, and assigning it for a cause.
And in another place he designs to be nearer to the mark by
saying, that " the shorter end is moved more against nature
than the other." This is the man dear to the dark ages, and
to their offsets in the present.

Archimedes however, who wrote a little later, threw a most
radical light upon the subject of the lever ; and his demon-
strations, with some alterations, abide to this day. It is inte-
resting to see how rapidly the chubby boys of antiquity shot u{)
in particular directions, whde the soil was fresh and pJl nature
before them for discovery. Let us praise famous men, and
our fathers that begat us ; — such as found out musical tunes,
and recited verses in writing* only let us not be persuaded
to believe they had any monopoly of knowledge, or any patent
for discovery except their being the first upon the ground.

In page 25, it nas already been submittt^d that " Peirasm^^ or
some equivalent term might be substituted for " Axiom/' and
that " For" should not be the sequence. But in the Corolla-
ries, which are nothing but demonstrations in petite tenue,
** For" is decorous and to be desired. In Corollary the first,
the desirable conjunction duly appears ; but in the second
(which enounces that if a weight be supported on a rod resting
on two fulcrums at equal distances from the weight, the pres-
sures on the two fulcrums are equal), its services are w^anted to
introduce the reason, viz. that if the weight be considered as
the fulcrum, the forces exerted at the two ends of the rod will
by the preceding principle be equal. In Corollary the third
(which enounces that if two equal weights be supported on a
rod resting on two fulcrums at equal distances from the weights

* Ecclesiauicus, xliv, 1 and 5. College Co:n:nemoration Ser vice.

of Mechanics.

44*7

respectively nearest and from the middle point between the
weights, the pressm-es on the two fulcrums are equal), there
would appear to be occasion for a further Peirasm which
is, that if given weights are in equilibrium on arms of given
lengths, any other weig^hts respectively equal to these will be
in equilibrium on any other arms of the same respective lengths ;
a simple matter, but one not inferible except from experience,
without admitting the vague and error-tempting principle of
allowing things to be because there is no particular reason visi-
ble why they should not. But afier laying this foundation, the
matter of the third Corollary may be established lii^e the second,
by considering the two weights as fulcrums, and the two forces
exerted at the middle point between them to break the rod, as
contrary and equal.

The second and third " Axioms" so called, appear also to
be purely and entirely matters of exp&riment. It would be very
odd indeed if they should not be true ; but there is no absolute
theoretic necessity, or at least none produced, why they must
inevitably be true. They would therefore be happily distin-
guished under some such term as has been proposed.

On these grounds or principles, the whole superstructure of
the tiieory of levers may be founded by rigid demonstration.

In paoe 31, the two kinds of levers in which the power and
weight are both on the same side of the fulcrum and only differ
in the one or the other being nearest to it, should be melted
into one. The terms power smd weight aroused to distinguish
the force which it is intended to suppose active, from that which
is supposed passive ; but have no reference to the one being
greater than the other. To introduce, therefore, a distinction
of classes upon this latter ground, tends to obscure the common
principle.

The operation of an oar, is a curious exemplification of the
lever. The man would not have been worthy of intense punish-
ment, who on the problem being presented to him without
opportunity for experiment, should have declared the plan a
fallacy like that of the child who pulls at the cart it is itself
sitting in.

The Wheel and Axle is manifestly only a circular lever. All
the properties of PuUies are also derivable from the properties
of the lever, by considering the two radii of the sheave" or wheel,
which are drawn to the rope at its points of contact, as the arms
of a lever. But the other way in which the properties of the
pulley are capable of being demonstrated, points to the exist-
ence of a distinct mechanical power, which if there is no better
name, might be called the " Twitch and of which it may
be matter of curiosity to know, whether it is reducible to any of

448

Whewell's First Principles

the other mechanical powers or not If a string be wrapped
several times round a cylindrical body (or if preferred, round a
bundle of some substances which it is desired to press together
with great force), it is plain that if the included substances ex-
erted an active force to burst into freedom, any one portion of the
string would only sustain that fractional part of the effort, which
is indicated by making the numerator unity or one, and the de-
nominator the number of turns taken by the wrapping string.
From which it follows that (after allowing for friction, which in
this case, as in the wedge and the screw, is of great amount)
the force exerted by the whole contrivance, is to the force applied
to the string, as the number of turns taken round the body, is
to unity.

The problem of the Inclined Plane " for a long course of
centuries resisted the attempts of Mathematicians to solve it."
The mistake of Pappus in the very enunciation of the problem,
has been already mentioned.

' But, independently of this confusion in the enunciation of the
problem, the principles by means of which Pappus attempts the sohi-
tion are altogether fallacious. He supposes the weight to be formed
into a sphere and placed on the inclined plane, and he considers the
weight of this sphere as supported by a lever, the fulcrum being the
point of contact of the sphere with the plane, and the power being
applied at the extremity of the horizontal radius. No reasonable
ground is or can be assij^ned for identifying the effects of such a lever
with those of the inclined plane for which it is thus substituted.' —
p. 42.

The non causa pro causa appears to have been the great
besetment of antiquity ; and the moderns in the main have
only improved when it suited their purpose. With the excep-
tion of a rising school of which Mr. Whewell may be considered
as the leader, there is very little genuine antipathv to a fallacy of
this kind, so long as men will receive it smoothly and no
public outcry attends the attempts to force it dov^^n.

Cardan and Guidubaldi e Marchionibus Montis (which being
interpreted is Marchmont), severally got no further than observ-
ing that the force required to maintain an equilibrium on an
inclined plane, was greater when the angle of the wedge was
more obtuse.

The history of the solution of this important problem will be
given at large ; as being a fragment of the history of science,
interesting and little known.

' The person who first solved the problem of oblique forces, on
principles which subsequent reasonings have confirmed, appears to
have been Simon Stevin of Bruges, whose works were published suun

of Mechanics. 449

after 1600. This mathematician not only deduced correctly the pro-
portion of the power to the weight on the inclined plane, but^ by means
of the propositions which he thus established, resolved forces so as
to obtain their effect in different directions, and solved a great
number of the most important problems relating to the oblique
action of forces. We shall explain briefly his mode of treating the
subject.'

* It has been recently stated (Drmkwafe7'''s Life of Galileo, p. 82.)
that the problem of the inclined plane had been solved at an earlier
period by Jordanus in the 13th century, and that the work in which
this solution was .'given, was published by Tartalea in 15G5. As
however this solution, even if it be interpreted so as to be right in the
result, was mixed up with many of the usual Aristotelian errors on
such subjects, and was not connected, so far as we know, either by
the author, the editor, or the readers of the work, with any consistent
and tenable train of mechanical reasoning, we may still, it would
seem, consider Stevin to be the father of Modern Statics, as we shall
find Galileo to be the father of Dynamics.'

* After the Inclined Plane had been rightly reasoned upon by Stevin,
various other authors also gave the solution of the same problem ; and
in a short time all questions connected with it were finally reduced to
the general proposition of the resolution of forces.'

* We proceed to explain the reasonings of Stevin,'

' Stevin's Proof of the Force on the Inclined Plane,

' Prop. A weight I'esiing on a perfectly smooth inclined plane, and
supported by a string parallel to the plane, will be in equilibrium when
the power is to the weight as the height of the plane is to its Imgth.^

^ An inclined plane is a plane inclined to
the horizon, as AC; and its height CB is
limited by a horizontal hne AB.^

' Let there be a uniform chain or cord re- jqP^'
torning into itself, as ACBD, and let this (pf^^
pass round the plane ACB, and hang down -pl'O

below in the festoon ADB. This chain will tf~~ ^i)

remain at rest by its own weight. In the f^

position of rest, the two sides of the festoon
ADB, (the ends being in the same horizon- ^c^u ^ ^cy
tai line) will be exactly similar, and will
exert equal tensions at A and B. Hence ^
if the part ADB be removed, the remain-
ing part ACB v/ill still continue at rest. But the weights of the por-
tions of the chain A C and B C are as and BC, Hence the weip-ht
which rests on the inclined plane is to the weight v/hich supports it
as.4Cto^C'.'

^ ' Thus if the angle CAB be one third of a right angle (30*^) BC is
the half o^ AC, and a force acting parallel to such a plane will sustain
a weight double of itself re!)ting on the plane.'

' In the same manner if we have two inclined planes of which the

VOL. 11. 2 F

450

Wlievvell's First Principles

height is common to the two, it may be shewn that the weights which
rest upon them, and balance each other by means of strings parallel
to the planes, are as the lengths of the planes.' — p, 43.

^ In writing of the history of the modern theory of Mechanics, it
was impossible not to profit by Mr. Drinkwater's "Life of Galileo.''
I gladly acknowledge great obligations to this excellent specimen of
scientific biography. On one point however, I have ventured to ex-
press dissent from the author of that work. I am not able to find,
in the propositions concerning the equilibrium of weights on inclined
planes, which he quotes from Tartalea's Edition of Jordanus, any
good ground for deposing Srevin from the diuaiity of having been the
first to give a proof of the statical prop.^rty of the inclined plane.'

* Jordanus's proof confessedly assumes that it requires the same
force to raise a body up any vertical height as to raise a body smaller
in any proportion up a vertical height gre;iter in the same proportion,
the bodies being supported on inclined planes. Such a proposition, if as-
serted in 1300, or even in 1564, must have been, I conceive, a mere
guess ; since it was not obviously connected with any self-evident
principle or known truth. It was probably one of many conjectures,
and till better reason was shewn, had no claim to attention, above
the solution of the problem of the inclined plane recorded by Pappus,
To speak of the principle of virtual velocities " as assumed in this
solution, is attributing to the author a detection of analogies of which
it is highly unlikely that he had any apprehension ; and a generali-
sation which was not thought of till long afterwards.'

^ Stevin's proof, on the other hand, does really refer the proposition
to an axiom so clear as to compel conviction, though not the most
simple which may be used. The impossibility of a loop of chain
running perpetually over an inclined plane by its own weight, may be
referred by us, if we chuse, to the ^* principle of virtual velocities
but it was undoubtedly clear to the readers of Stevin on far less
general views. The deducing the doctrine of oblique forces from this,
as an axiom, was an important step in Mechanics. It adds to the
merit of Stevin, that having been the person to make this step, he was
fully aware of its use and importance. It applies in a very great
variety of cases of the properties offerees which he thus established;
and in some of his works the inclined plane with the chain hanging
round it, is employed as a vignette ; accompanied with the motto

fVojider en is gheeii wonder. '

^ I may add that Stevin's discovery of this proof is of an earlier
date than I have stated in the following pages, if it be contained
in the Beghinselen der Waaghconst published in 1586, which I
believe it is, though never having seen the book, I cannot speak with
certainty.'

' On these grounds I still consider Stevin as the first person who
rightly solved the problem of forces acting obliquel}^, and conse-
quently as the founder of the science of Statics. And I have no doubt
that in this character he would have obtained far more celebrity than
has fallen to his lot, if the speculations of Galileo had been given
to the world half a century later than they were ; and if, by this

of Mechanics.

451

means, the science of Statics had been left to unfold itself upon its
own proper principles, as in the reasonings of Stevia it had hegun to
do, and as it would have done if it had not become mixed with the
mechanical doctrines of motion. But before the works of the Flemish
engineer could produce much effect upon the mathematicians of
Europe, the minds of physical philosophers were all turned towards
Italy, where Galileo and his disciples were putting forth their doctrines
concerning moticm ; a subject of much more varied and extensive
bearings than the doctrine of equilibrium, and rendered peculiarly in-
teresting by its connexion with the great question then agitated, of
the truth or falsehood of the Copernican system. And the principle
of virtual velocities, though in reality it was established as a general
principle by being proved in each particular case, tended still further
to throw into the shade these statical investigations, by making the
doctrine of equilibrium appear to depend upon the doctrine of
motion.' — Preface, p. vi.

The early speculations on the nature of Accelerating Force
were in the same strain of feebleness with those on the Laws of
Motion in general.

• When men began to speculate concerning the motions of bodies
which fall from a considerable height, they soon observed these two
facts ; first, that a body went on moving quicker and quicker the
further it fell ; second, that heavy bodies fell more quickly than very
light ones.'

*The first rude guesses which were made to explain these facts and
to assign their laws, were, as might have been expected, erroneous.
It was held by Aristotle that heavy bodies are accelerated by the air
which rushes in behind them to fill up the void their progress leaves;
and that large bodies fall faster than small ones in proportion to their
weight.' — p. 69.

It is not clear that something like this notion of Aristotle's
does not hang by some people to this day. There is a theory
touching the motion of ships and vessels being accelerated or
otherwise affected, by the water which rushes in behind them to
fill up the void, which seems to be the same thing in a state of
trans j)osition.

* The slightest attempts to verify these laws b)^ experiment and by
tracing them to their consequences, would have shewn them to be
false. But unfortunately in the times succeeding those in which
these doctrines were promulgated the exact sciences were studied only
as sciences of deduction. It was supposed that the first axioms of
natural philosophy were to be discovered by their own internal
evidence ; experiment was not appealed to, to suggest or verify them ;
principles once asserted by eminent men were thenceforth accepted
without dispute ; and the business of other speculators was to deduce
the consequences of such principles according to the rules of logic'

2 F 2

452

Whewell's First Principles

' This continued to be the case for nearly two thousand years.
Galileo was the first person who drew the attention of the world to
the necessity of examining, by comparison with facts, the truth of the
asserted laws of motion.'

' It was easily shewn by experiment that the second of the above
laws w^as false. Balls of 100 lbs. and 1 lb. were let fall from the
famous leaning tower of Pisa ; and instead of falling in the same
time through spaces which were as 100 to 1, it appeared that the
larger anticipated the smaller in its descent to the ground by two inches
only. This small difi'erence may justly be attributed to the resist-
ance of the air, which produces a somewhat greater effect on the
lighter [smaller] body. And by similar experiments it was shewn
that bodies of all magnitudes fall towards the earth with equal velo-
cities, except so far as they are affected by such causes of irregularity." —
p. 69.

The speculations which led to the establishment of the
Second Law of Motion*, appear to have been entered into with
more caution by their early followers, and more consciousness
of the possibility of being wrong.

^ A stone thrown from the hand describes a curved path and soon
comes to the ground. The laws of such motion presented an obvious
subject of speciiliition. Aristotle asks f " Why does the motion cease
of things cast into the air ? Does this happen when the force has
ceased which sent them forth ? or is there an opposite force which
acts against the motion ? or does the fact result fron the disposition
to fall, and occur when this disposition is stronger than the projectile
force ? or is it absurd to put the question in this manner, instead of
referring to the general law s of motion P"

^ The last clause is perhaps freely translated, but, as we have given
it, it suggests the true reply to the preceding questions,'

* No true explanation was given of the facts which suggested these
questions till a much later period. A mistaken belief concerning the
nature of the motion of projectiles, or bodies projected, contributed
for some time to mislead enquirers on this subject. In the use of
^'military projectiles," it was prescribed as a rule that, for certain dis-
tances, a gun must be directed point blank that is, with its barrel
in a horizontal straight line towards the point aim_ed at; but that
fur g! eater distances the barrel must be elevated, so as to make al-
lowance for the fall of the bullet, which was called shooting " at
random." This led to the opinion that the path of a bullet dis-
charged from a gun was a horizontal straight line till it reached a cer-
tain distance, and that after that distance it began to descend in a
curved line.'

' When any force acts upon a body in motion, the change of motion which i>
■produces is in the' direction and proportional to the magnitude of the force which acts.'
—Second Law of Motion, p. 84.

of Mechanics.

^ Thomas Di^^es, in his Treatise on the New Science of Great
Artillerie (1591), remarked that the huUet has, even from the bej2:in-
nmg-, a downward motion which though insensible at first, draws it
from its direct course.'

* Tartalea also denied that a bullet ever moves in a horizontal line ;
but his theory was still very erroneous ; for he supposed that the. bullet's
path through the air is made up of an ascending and a descending'
straight line, connected in the middle by a circular arc'

* In 1609, Galileo had considered the subject, and had satisfied
himself that the motion of projectiles in a vertical direction, is not
affected by their motion in a horizontal direction. This principle, com-
bined wirh his theory of falling bodies, led him to the true doctrine of
projectdes.'

^ Galileo's principle, having been once suggested, was supported
by many circumstances in the motion of bodies projected, and was
especially confirmed by the discussions which took place about that
period concerning the motion of the Earth.* — p, 80.

The *' military projectors " contrived to add a new entangle-
ment to the question, by mistaking the consequences of looking
along a line of sight not parallel to the axis of their gun but
intersecting? it at the distance of a few feet from the muzzle,
for what they were pleased to call the rising of the ball."
Thirty years ago, it was rare to find a naval or military man
who had any consciousness of the mistake, or of the useless
and ridiculous complication it introduced into the mystery of
gunnery. The most blundering recruit has a sort of instinctive
perception, that to hit an object at a distance, he must raise his
aim in proportion to the distance, as was his vi'ont in throwinj^
stones ; but all his ideas are scattered, when he is presented
with a piece whose line of sight is made to converge towards
the axis, and told he must believe that the ball rises for certain
specified distances.

When the presumed Laws of Motion were applied to the phae-
nomena of Astronomy, their points of strength and weakness
were necessarily brought to the test.

^ The doctrine promulgated in modern times by Copernicus, that
the Earth travels round the Sun, and revolves on her own axis, led to
a long series of controversies, which turned mainly upon the truth or
falsehood of the supposed laws of motion, and especially of the one
now under our consideration. The o])ponents of the Earth's motion
attacked that doctrine with objections drawn h'om erroneous mechani-
cal principles ; but the assertors of the Copernican system, being at
first ignorant of the true principles which bear upon the subject, were
not fortunate in their answers to the objections.'

^ If the Earth, it was said, revolved so rapidly from west to east,

454

Whewell's First Pinnciples

a perpetual wind would set in from east to west, more violent than
what blows in the greatest hurricanes ; a stone, thrown westwards,
would fly to a much greater distance than one thrown with the same
force eastwards ; as what moved in a direction, contrary to the motion
of the Earth, would necessarily pass over a greater portion of its
surface, than what, with the same velocity, moved along with it. A
hall, it was said, dropt from the mast of a ship under sail, does not
fall precisely at the toot of the mast, hut behind it ; and in the same
manner, a stone dropt Irom a high tower would not, upon the suppo-
sition of the Earth's motion, fall precisely at the bottom of the tower,
but west of it, the Earth heing, in the mean time, carried away east-
ward from below it. It is amusing to observe, hy what subtile and
metaphysical evasions the followers of Copernicus endeavoured to
elude this objection, whixdi, before the doctrine of the Composition of
Motion had been explained by Galileo, was altogether unanswerable.
They allowed, that a ball dropt from the mast of a ship under sail
would not fall at the foot of the mast, but behind it ; because the ball,
they said, was no part of the ship, and because the motion of the ship
was natural neither to itself nor to the ball. But the stone was a part
of the earth, and the diurnal and annual revolutions of the earth were
natural to the whole, and to every part of it, and therefore to the
stone. The stone, therefore, having naturally the same motion with
the Earth, fell precisely at the bottom of the tower. But this answer
could not satisfy the imagination, which still found it difficult to con-
ceive how these motions could be natural to the Earth ; or how a body,
which had always presented itself to the senses as inert, ponderous,
and averse to motion, should naturally be continually wheeling about
both its own axis and the Sun, with such violent rapidity. It was,
besides, argued by Tycho Brahe, upon the principles of the same
philosophy, which had afforded both the objection and the answer,
that even upon the supposition, that any such motion was natural to
the whole body of the Earth, yet the stone, which was separated from
it, could no longer be actuated by that motion. The limb, which is
cut from an animal, loses those animal motions which were natural
to the whole. The branch, which is cut off from the trunk, loses that
vegetative motion which is natural to the whole tree. Even the
metals, minerals, and stones, which are dug out from the bosom of
the Earth, lose those motions which occasioned their production and
increase, and which were natural to them in their original state.
Though the diurnal and annual motion of the Earth, therefore, had
been natural to them while they were contained in its bosom ; it could
no longer be so when they were separated from it.'

^ The objection to the system of Copernicus, which Was drawn
from the nature of motion, and that was most insisted on by Tycho
Brahe, was at last fully answered by Galileo; not, however, till about
thirty years after the death of Tycho, and about a hundred after that
of Copernicus. It was then that Galileo, by explaining the nature
of the composition of motion, by showing, both from reason and ex-
perience, that a ball dropt from the mast of a ship under sail would
fall precisely at the foot of the mast, and by renderiiog this doctrine

of Mechanics,

455

from a great number of other instances, quite familiar to the imagi-
nation, took off, perhaps, the principal objection which had been made
to this hypothesis.'

^ The disciples of the school of Galileo went on confirming this
view of the matter. Thus Gassendi, in his treatise De motu im-
presso a motore translato" shews in a variety of ways, that a body
which, while it is carried along in any vehicle, as a boat or a chariot,
has another motion impressed upon it, by falling, or by being thrown,
or in any other manner, retains still the motion of the vehicle. He
thus refutes the objections which had been brought against the motion
of the Earth by various persons, and especially by Morinus, in a trea-
tise entitled Alec Terrce Fractce.^'

^ In this manner it was now seen that a stone falling from the top
of a tower, ought not to be left behind by the motion of the Earth's
surface from west to east, and thus to fall to the west, as had been
asserted to be the consequence of the laws of nature. The stone
would partake of the motion which the tower had, and would therefore,
relatively to the tower, fall in a vertical straight line.' — 'p. 81.

But in all ages, the defenders of ancient errors, when beaten
out of one assertion, have been found equally prepared to stand
upon the contrary.

^ After it had ceased to be a tenable argument against the rotatory
motion of the Earth, that the stone did not fall to the west of the
vertical, it was asserted that a real objection was to be found in the
circumstance, that the stone did not fall to the ea^t of the vertical.
For the horizontal velocity, from west to east, which the stone has
when it is let fall, and which it retains during its fall, is that which
belongs to the top of the tower. But the t(»p of the tower moves
faster than the bottom by the rotatory motion of the Earth, being
farther from the centre. Hence, the stone ought to move farther to
the east in the time of its fall, than the bottom of the tower does;
and thus ought to get the start of the tower, and fall to the eastward
of its base.'

^ The answer to this objection is, that the stone really does fall to
the eastward of the foot of the vertical, but that in all experiments
which we can make, the interval is too small to be certainly deter-
mined by experiment, as a})pears by calculating its magnitude. In
some experiments made in Italy, it is said that such a deviation was
really detected.'

^ By experiments and controversies of this kind, the Copernican

system was finally established as the true system of the universe.'

f. 83.

Of the answer to the last objection, it appears possible to
question the accuracy after all. Is not the real answer, that
in the calculation which ends in determining that the stone
ought to fall to the eastward, the successive impulses of the
accelerating force are assumed to take place in lines always
parallel to the first position of the vertical in fixed space,

456

WhewelVs First Principles

whereas they really act in straight lines successively inclined
from such parallels hy an increasing angle, viz. the angle de-
scribed at the earth's centre by the motion of the tower in the
time elapsed since the stone began to fall ; — and that if this
continual change of direction were taken rigidly into the ac-
count, it would bring the stone to the foot of the tower and no
where else?

Among the effects of centrifugal force (in p. 92.) is enume-
rated the augmentation of the equatorial diameters of the earth
and of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. As mere matter of
speculation and by the bye, — is it not likely that the actual re-
lation of the diameters has been the consequence of some great
convulsion ? And would not the convulsion most competent to
produce the effect, be a change in the axis of rotation, and the
outbreak of internal waters in consequence ? If a planet was
originally framed with its sea-water in the inside under a thin
crust, and of such a form as would balance the effects of rota-
tion about the actual axis, what pressure on the square inch
would arise from changing the axis of rotation in different as-
signed degrees? For example, in our earth, under such cir-
cumstances, would not a change in the axis of rotation from
the previously-existing poles to their equator, create a pressure
at the previous poles, equal to the weight of a column of sea-
water fourteen miles high, or 33046 avoirdupois pounds upon
the square inch ; while a change to any position short of the
equator, would create some inferior pressure which might be
calculated ? A piece of hard free -stone of 24 inches long, five
inches broad, and nine-tenths of an inch thick, laid flat-wise
and propped at the two ends, broke in the middle with a weight
of 127 lbs; from which it may be collected that to tear asun-
der masses of such stone would require a direct force of 753 lbs.
per square inch. If two oblate spheroids of the dimensions of
the earth be placed so that their axes bisect each other at right
angles, their surfaces will intersect in what (neglecting the
spheroidity) maybe considered as two great circles cutting each
other at right angles. If on the inner surface of one of the
four menisci or oddly-shaped figures contained between the
intersecting surfaces, successive circles be described about the
point which is the extremity of the axis of one of the spheroids,
the pressure of water on the surface included by one of these
circles will vary at first as the square of its radius, as will also
the weight of the shell itself of a given thickness, while the
quantity of tenacious crust of a given thickness to be broken
through in its circumference varies only as the radius. But
afterwards the variation of the pressure of water will grow less
rapid, by reason of the decreasing depths ; and there will be

of Mechanics,

457

some circle or figure approaching to one, (from the mode in which
the depth of water varies, apparently a kind of ellipse with its
greatest diameter in the direction of the greatest dimension of
the meniscus, and its periphery interior to the edges of the me-
niscus in all parts), where the pressure of water acting upwards,
compared with the weight of the shell and the tenacity of its
periphery, will he a maximum. If a circle were described about
the point intimated, at the distance of the point of contact with
the next meniscus or 45'^ of the earth's surface, its circrumfe-
rence would be 1121 millions of inches ; the tenacity of this cir-
cumference of free-stone, for every inch in its thickness 844098
millions of lbs; the weight of the included shell (taking its
specific gravity at double that of sea-water), for every inch of
thickness 8730 billions of pounds ; the whole resistance for every
inch of thickness, about 8731 billions of lbs (being the sum of
the two last) ; the pressure of sea- water on the included shell
from below, 1 720 trillions of lbs ; which last number divided by
the next preceding, gives 197,000 inches, or in round terms
three miles and one-ninth, for the thickness of the crust of hard
free-stone that would be broken through, on such line, and pro-
bably a much greater thickness would be broken through on
the line where the pressure on the included surface compared
with the resistances opposed is a maximum. From which it
appears likely to be deduced, that a body of internal water
would be competent to bloiv up the exterior crust of the earth
though made of solid free-stone, to a thickness sufhcient to ac-
count for any of the known phaenomena of geology that can be
referred to such an origin. What physical accident can be
imagined productive of such a change of axis, except the im-
pact of some other planetary body ? Would not an impact of
this kind which should have removed one of the poles from any
part of the circumference of the small circle described about
London at the distance of 60°, to its present place, have been
sufficient to account for a climate of palm-trees and crocodiles
(the climate of Grand Cairo) in Pevensey Level, and for a
** br^aking-up of all the fountains of the great deep," sufficient
to throw the strata of the crust of the olden world into any po-
sitions a geologist could desire ? Will not the progress of geo-
logical science point out the situation of the inter-tropical belt
of the olden world by the remains of tropical animals, and con-
sequently the situation of the old poles ; and has anybody laid
the foundation of a bone chart with this view ? Are there ap-
pearances of gibbosity in any of the planets, which might be
referred to changes of form in the fluid parts while the solid
ones, entirely or in part, continued as before? If a body was

458

Whewell's First Principles

formed spherical and at rest, and then spun till the internal
waters broke out, would not these form an equatorial belt ; and
are there appearances referible to such a source on the surfaces
of any of the planets? Finally, may not the moon be a world
in its pristine state, waiting for the shock that shall give it the
surface of a terraqueous globe ? *

The following inference has not been popularly diffused.

' If the rotation of our Earth were seventeen times faster than it
is, the bodies or matter at the equator would have centrifugal force
equal to their gravity, and a little more velocity would cause them to
fly off altogether, or to rise and form a ring round the Earth like that
which surrounds Saturn.' — p. 92.

The speculations on the Third Law of Motion, notice the
great effects of percussion (exemplified, for instance, in the
driving of a nail), as distinguished from pressure; but finally
omit the explanation. Query, where is the explanation to be
found?

The enunciation of the Third Law of motion (p. 104), has
not altogether the appearance of an improvement. That
" Action and reaction are equal, and in opposite directionSy^ —
though it may require a good deal of elucidation before all that
it includes is understood, seems to be finally more efficacious
and expressive than that " When pressure communicates
motion directly (that is, in the direction of the pressure,) the
Moving Force is as the pressure,^' But possibly there were
reasons and objects which do not immediately meet the eye.
The term " pressure" is manifestly introduced with a view to
confine the word *' force" to its sense in the phrases " moving
force" and "accelerating force;" and intends what has usually
been implied by a uniform force." It may be a question
whether it would not have been better to alter the word force
in the phrases of '* moving" and '* accelerating force ;" in which
the meaning of "force" seems to be that of efficacy or ope-
ration in a particular direction or way, produced by the agency
of a power which may also be acting in sundry other ways at
the same time. The " force" would seem to be properly the
single agent, as for instance gravity ; while what have been
called the " moving" and " accelerating forces" seem to be the
operative powers of gravity in producing two different kinds of
consequences.

* There may be major errors in these calculations or surmises ; but there is
enough to show that interesting results may possibly be obtained.

of Mechanics.

459

Postscript.

On reference to the King's Library at Paris, Stevin's solu-
tion of the problem of the Inclined Plane is found to be in the
book, and under the date, surmised by Professor Whewell as
quoted in page 4 50 of the present Article. The title of the
work is De Beghinselen der Weeghconst beschreven duer
Simon Stevin van Brugghe. To Ley den. In de Druckerye
van Christofe Plantijn, Bij Francois van Eaphelingen. CIO
Id LXXXVL * The Elements of the Weighing Art [Statics],
written by Simon Stevin of Bruges. At Leyden, in the Print-
ing Office of Christopher Plantijn, by Francis Van Raphe-
lingen. 1586.'

The solution in question is in the pages 40-42 ; but instead
of a single inclined plane with a base and perpendicular, there
is presented a double inclined plane, such as would be made
by adding to Professor Wheweirs figure a second inclined
plane of the same altitude and about half the base of the other,
but with no perpendicular drawn or expressed between the two.
The same representation is introduced as a vignette in the title-
page, with the motto Wonder en is gheen wonder, * A wonder
and is no wonder.'

Two other books by the same author, entitled De Weeghdart
beschreven duer Simon Stevin van Brugghe (The Weighing
Art, written by Simon Stevin of Bruges), and De Beghinselen
der Watericichts beschreven duer Simon Stevin van Brugghe
(The Elements of Hydrostatics, written by Simon Stevin of
Bruges), contain each the same vignette and motto in the
title-page ; and are also in the King's Library at Paris.

Stevin or Stevinus is not unknown to British fame. " My
uncle Toby" bought him in the second year after being wounded
before Namur; and his being brought to mind by the ap-
pearance of Dr. Slop, was the cause of the dispute between the
two brothers in which both behaved so characteristically. He
has also been commemorated, as the first who wrote sensibly
on the subject of keeping Public Accounts.

Westminster Review, 1 July, 1833.

AuT. XVI. — An Essay on the History and Theory of Music, and on the
Qualities, Capabilities, and Management of the Human Voice.
Second Edition. Enlarged and considtrab/y improved. By I. Na-
than. — Parts I and II. 1832 and 1833. London; Morton and
Co. New Bond Street.

USIC, which is the poetry of geometry, is on the march
•^^^ like everything else. The knowledge why musical effect
is produced from sounds of one particular kind or relation and

460

Nathan on the History

not from others, which used to be confined to a small number
of crabbed philosophers, principally decayed organists and
heads of colleges, is spreading fast in what the phrase of the
times denominates " the musical world," and is in a fair way
of producing practical good fruits. Not that this contains all
knowledge, or that music has been non-existent till now ; this
is only the sarcastic exaggeration with which all advancement
is met by the patrons of *' the extinguisher/* But every ex-
tension of information has its crop of advantages in the end.
It invariably finishes by clarifying something, sharpening
something, increasing the powers of something. Though it
should have the appearance of being at most but an improve-
ment in the mechanism of the performer, it will find the means
of re-acting upon the imagination of the composer. If Mercury's
or Jubal's lyre had never got beyond the first shell of a tortoise
and the random sounds of strings of nature's stretching, the
musical composers would not have been far on their road at
present ; and by parity of reasoning, any fraction of improve-
ment in the same track now, may be expected to be attended
with its modicum of good. As an instance in point, it appears
to be undeniable that the peculiar powers of the musical phaB-
nomenon of the present day, Paganini*, — who, after making
all imaginable allowance for what it may be possible to class
among brilliant difficulties, will leave his traces upon instru-
mental performance of all kinds in secula seculorum^ — are to
be referred to a highly augmented familiarity (whether acquired
from theory, or from the instinctive practical tact attendant
upon favourable natural organization, is of little immediate im-
portance,) with those mysteries of the musical string which the
learned, from the days of Pythagoras, have only darkly seen.

In nothing is the modern world more universally improved,
than in the getting rid of nonsensical non-sequiturs. What a
long time, for instance, it will be, before a modern musician
is found making *' the belly of his instrument curved to repre-
sent the heavens ; the back level to represent the earth ;
with a dragon eight inches from the bridge, to represent
the eight points of the winds ; four inches of neck, to repre-

* A set has been made against this extraordinary performer, on the ground,
among others, of his being a foreigner. He is consequently become part and
parcel of the question of Free trade. If foreigners excel on the violin and
Englishmen on the spinning-jenny, let us encourage foreigners to play to us on
the one and Englishmen on the other» The fact that the public had rather
hear the music of the foreigner, and rather wear the broad-clorh or use the
hard-ware of the Englishman, is proof that there are callings to which English-
men are more strongly invited, both by the public interest and by their own,
than to music. The point is defensible to extremity ; and will make a good
text some other time. Englishmen must pay double for their bread, and ous^ht
to do, till they' can work these clap-traps of pseudo-patriotism out of their
cerebral processes.

and Theory of Music.

461

sent the four seasons of the year ; five strings to represent
the five planets and the five elements; and its total length
fixed at seven feet two inches, to represent the universality of
things,^' Such, on the authority apparently of Pere Amiot,
was the ancient kin of the Chinese, — that sagacious people,
whose domestic policy is still viewed with lurking affection by
the friends of stable institutions at home. Yet even there,
conservative principles have not been able to keep out change ;
for it appears that ** the modern kin has seven strings," in con-
sequence probably of discoveries among the planets, and that
the universality of present things is represented by " about five
feet five inches." {An Essay &c. ch. i. p. 3.)

The zeal against non-sequiturs, however, should not be ex-
tended to analogies of which the reason is only unknown. One
of the most remarkable of these, is the analogy understood to
exist between the divisions of the musical string, and the dis-
tances of the planets from the sun, as also with the divisions of
the different coloured rays when dispersed by refraction ; the
first of which is manifestly the origin of the idea of the " har-
mony of the spheres." The writer would do good service, who
would detail without affectation or mysticism, the exact degree
in which these analogies exist or the contrary. If the analogy
is certain, it points to the suspicion, in the cases of the arrange-
ment of the planets and the particles of light, of a connexion
with the successively greatest possible frequencies of coinci-
dence in the effects of different sets of periodical impulses of
some unknown kind.

Another point on which the moderns have improved, is in
scouting the idea of a regulated " best though there are still
symptoms of a school, particularly in France, who believe
themselves to be on the verge of breaking out into the beait
ideal in sculpture, painting, poetry, and politics, — from which,
to setting up their idol and demanding that men confine them-
selves to worshipping it, the step is small. Plato it seems, says,
that the Egyptians ruled " that nothing but beautiful forms
and fine music should be permitted to enter into the assemblies
of young people. Having settled ivhat those forums and that
music should be, they exhibited them in their temples ; 72or was
it allowable for painters, or other imitative artists, to innovate
or invent any forms different from what were estahlishedy
What the beautiful forms were, it is given the moderns to
see ; — not so bad as might be, and yet a world behind the
innovating Greeks. And of the music, it is fair to suppose the
same. The mania of orthodoxy has been hereditary from the
first man. Adam and Eve had doubtless a right way of putting
on a coat of skins, — and rated Cain, Abel, Seth, and their little
nameless sisters, for innovations in the art of dress.

462

Nathan on the History

The ancients had an exalted opinion of the moral and politi-
cal powers of music; and it is -not impossible that when the
direct communication of ideas was vastly more limited than
since the diffusion of printing, the indirect method of music
might possess greater power in consequence. A '* Lilliburlero"
directed against Nero could not well have been less efficacious,
and might easily have been more, than against any sovereign
of modern days. The politicians of antiquity seem consequently
to have been wonderfully anxious to preserve in primitive sim-
plicity their Dorian " Hundredth Psalm," and Phrygian " Gre-
nadiers' March,'' and to confine to their proper places the Ionian

Begone Dull Care," and Lydian All Good Lasses." The
Chinese, who are the pinks of propriety in Church and State,
also " have a specific number of airs for great occasions, which
are never changed or varied, and as these airs are only appro-
priated to particular times and occasions, they are constantly
recognized, felt, and understood. They have their court airs
[as God Save our great Fum Hi,''], airs to excite virtue [a
kind of *' Chinamen strike home,"], and airs to inspire true
concord and national felicity" [being probably Confucius's
Boys," and " Croppies lie down.''] The resemblance between
the Chinese scale and the Scottish, remarked by Dr. Burney,
appears traceable to the same source as the resemblance be-
tween a man with one leg in China and in Scotland. It pro-
ceeds simply from the omission or non-use of the Fourth and
Seventh of the key. One consequence of which is, that Chi-
nese or Scottish airs may be made d discretion on the piano-
forte, by the recipe of playing only on the black keys ; every
attempt at making an air out of those notes, appearing to glide
into the Scoto-Chinese style, as the most agreeable to the ear
the sounds given will admit of.

The Chinese must certainly have an Opera. In India-ships
it is a common tbing to set the Chinese seamen to perform
upon the quarter-deck for the amusement of the passengers ;
and three of them have been heard to sustain the characters
of a Mandarin and his wife and son quarrelling, in a way that
could not have been surpassed by any Italian water-borne
buffi.

The Hindoo instrumental music, is not without effect, and it
is easy to imagine the possibility of a taste being acquired for
it. It is monotonous and soothing,— like the tinkling of water
and some other continuous sounds. The idea which it susrgested
to the writer of this on first hearing, was that it was like the
effort of a musician to spin out a close ad infinitum by a per-
petual evasion. Everything seemed to wind up into an air
bearing some resemblance to the two first lines of" Say, little
foolish fluttering thing ;'' but instead of concluding, it ran on

and Theory of Music.

463

into a kind of interminable coda, mingled with sntitches of frag-
ments of the previous air. The principal instrument is a
stringed one called ^xYar (cithara) ; being a small violin, played
with a bow in the posture of a violoncello, by a performer sitting
on the ground. A performer on two kettle-drums of the size of
a man's head, which he beats with the palms of his hands, ap-
pears to consider himself as guiding the whole and discharging
the obligato part, and gives himself as many airs of direction as
the leader at the Odeon.

The Joloffs on the coast of Africa (who are also among the
writer's musical acquaintances) play on a kind of guitar of dif-
ferent sizes, manifestly intended for piccolo, tenor, and bass ;
formed of half a gourd covered with a piece of hide stretched
over it wet, the neck consisting of a stick thrust through two
holes in the gourd, and the strings fastened each to a separate
ring of soft leather encircling the neck, which on being forced
upwards retains its place by friction like the brace of a drum,
being exactly what is found represented on the Egyptian monu-
ments (See Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians, Vol. 11, pp. 301, 302, 303 *) ; and one peculiarity of
their tunes appears to be, that they end on a shake or trilL,
They have fixed airs, distinguished by names ; one, for example,
the performer called "The rousing of the Damel," doubtless
the *' Veillo7is pour le salut de V Empire " of that portion of
the universe. Bowdich's account of the white negro harper,
whom he saw during his mission to Ash ant ee, (given in
Ch. i. p. 39 of the Essay), is confirmation of music's having
made no inconsiderable advance in the interior.

The Wahabees (with whom the writer has also had the ad-
vantage of a personal acquaintance) chant their prayers in a
manner closely resembling some parts of the cathedral service.
Whatever may be their theory, they have a practical acquaint-
ance with the rudiments of counterpoint.

The author would not have spoken so slightingly of the Jew''s
Harp (which in his zeal for the house of David he wishes to
have called Jaufs Harp), if he had heard M. Eulen stein's per-
formances upon that instrument. The performer has sixteen
Jew^s Harps before him, of different sizes, and plays upon tv/o
at once, changing one of them on an average every half minute
without interrupting his execution on the other. From this
necessity for changing, it may be concluded that the sounds are
of the nature of Harmonics. The effect produced, most nearly
resembles that of a musical snuff-box ; but with the power of
swelling and sustaining the sounds. There are in fact two

* Added in 1839.

464 Programme to JVestmmster Review, 1 Oct. 1833.

kinds of tone ^distinguishable ; the one silvery and pure, the
other a kind of drone Uke the sound produced by the instru-
ment in the mouths of juvenile performers. The power of
rapid and distinct execution, appears to be unlimited. The whole
is a ^reat curiosity, to those who desire to be acquainted with
all the possibilities of things.

The Enharmonic " of the ancients, was simply playing '* in
harmony by which they meant " in tune." It was an attempt,
but not a successful one, to determine the perfect intervals in a
single key, and afterwards transfer them to a variety of keys.
This object is described with a wonderful clearness by the ancient
writers on music.

Of the word tone " (from tuvu, to stretch) there can be no
doubt that the origmal meaning is '* pitch." But the word is
now ordinarily used to mean quality of sound;" though the
original meaning is preserved in " intonation " which means
making sounds to be what is popularly called " in tune," and in
fact in the word " tune" itself. But as the word pitch" is
at hand to express the original meaning, it is perhaps as well
to agree to let the change pass.

The attempts to underrate the musical knowledge of the
ancients," (See Ch. iv. p. 65.) must have either been without
evidence, or against evidence. Of the compositions of the
ancients, nothing is known ; it may be said therefore cadit
'qucestio, except it should be determined to infer that if the com-
positions had been better they would have endured. To which
again might be answered, that no man can say they have not
endured. Where musical publication vv^as next to non-existent,
everything must have depended upon tradition ; and nobody
can say how many of the traditional melodies of Europe may
be ancient Greek. But on what may be called the mathematics
of music, the ruins left are enough to show that the modern
movements have been retrograde. Disjointed members and
scattered fragments, as on the site of hundred-gated Thebes,
point to the circuit of the ancient whole, and wait only for some
organizing eye to recover its proportions.

Programme to the Westminster Review for 1 October, 1833.

The object of anxiety for all parties at the present moment is
Portugal. A few shufiiers pretend they care nothing about it ;
but they are nobody. The Tories are dying that their tyrant

* ' The Enharmonic, so called from its being taken in the perfect intervals of
whatever is the subject of the \\?ctmoViV :—Arhtidt& Q uintilianus. B. ii. p. 111.
See Article on the *' Enharmonic of the Ancients,' from the Westminster Review
for April 1832 j in page 99 of the present Volume.

Programme to JVestminster Review for 1 Oct, 1833. 465

should succeed ; the other side are anxious that it should at all
events be somebody else. It would be curious to know how
far, from the highest inclusive, the plot extended, for sending
Miguel to do what he did ; for that there was a plot, — that it
was known, settled, and understood, at the time the Life-
Guards were turning out before the sprig of absolutism in
England and orders inditing for the troops on the other shore
to aid, — is what the conduct of party men since, has demon-
strated as clearly as anything short of Euclid. The postponing
the recognition, — which, after success, must inevitably have
come in time, — was a necessary stipulation. But it was all
amantium ires, the bye-play of two lovers that quarrel on the
stage to deceive old Square-toes ; there has been none of the
wrath that would have attended a real dupery.

The great good of the thing, has been the unmasking. Time
was, that these statesmen had half persuaded the public, that
they were only men who wanted to be more careful than their
neighbours ; cautious by habit, conservative by principle. By
this affair of Portugal and its filaments in other countries, they
have been made to produce themselves as the supporters of
" civil and religious tyranny all over the world." It matters not
what be the religion, so there is a priest to domineer. It signi-
fies not where is the tyranny ; the one thing needful is that
there be absolute power. Can any point in any struggle the
British people has ever gone through for its political privi-
leges, be shown where they would not have been in the ranks
of the enemy ? The inference is clear ; they must be wTOught
out of existence like the Jacobites. A regular attaciv must be
kept up upon the places where the nits grow ; and in the next
generation, the species will be extinct.

In the mean time it is clear a bolder course must be taken,
n respect of union with what is liberal in Europe. What did
the Whigs do in 1688 and afterwards? Did they play at
bo-peep with the tyranny of the day ; and send pious men to be
delighted with the way it said its prayers ? Not that a general
w^ar is the thing to be forced; — the enemy would have made
one long ago if he had not been afraid, and things are going on
much faster without. But the legitimates just now% are a
nettle there is no occasion to be " tender-handed " with.

VOL. II.

466

A Free Trader's Defence

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1833.

Art. I. — On, National Economy. No. FJI. Fraser's Magazine for
Town and Country, No. 43, for July 1833.

* rr^HE Free Trade " question, though advocated by its partisans

with the greatest zeal and pertinacity, has never yet received full
justice at their hands.' — p. 103.

It is exceedingly easy to retort this charge. As proof of it,
here follows a sketch of what a better-informed advocate than
has yet appeared in public, might say in defence of the policy
opposed to " Free Trade,'' or of what for convenience (whether
with absolute correctness or not) may be called the " Mercan-
tile System." There is sometimes danger in the weakness of
an enemy ; or at all events an able leader may convert past
weakness into a source of present advantage. He may use it,
for instance, as the means of drawing his adversary into an
ambuscade ; and when he gets him into his circle, he may con-
jure against him after a sort that never would have happened
had the said adversary been prepared. The object therefore is
now to tap and prematurely let off" a Tory speech, which if
brought forward in proper time and place, with claqueurs and
other appliances to boot, might have been hailed of all admirers
as creating great dismay in the ranks of the opponents *.

' The advocates, Sir, of changes in all our most important

* institutions and systems of policy, never adventure themselves

* in a fair field. Their combats are always carried on in a terri-

* tory existing only in their own fertile imaginations, and from
' which they have taken care to remove as far as possible any

* analogy with the real and tangible circumstances by which all

* sublunary questions are practically decided. And hence it
' is, — ^(and I say it without meaning to impute any deeper male-

* volence than is inseparable from the busy spirit of interference

* with the established opinions of mankind which is unhappily

* gone forth among us,) — that "they hatch cockatrice eggs,

* and weave the spider's web:" — should T be wrong if I pointed
' to myriads of my suffering countrymen as evidence that I

* might pursue the words of the inspired penman and add, "he
" that eateth of their eggsdietb, ' (hear) — or threw myself on
' the humanity of the assembly by which I have the honour to be

* heard, for giving effect to the cheering conclusion, that "their
" webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover
" themselves with their works" ? (hear, hear).

* An imitation was intended of the style and manner of an Anti- Free-Trade
orator, at that time of high consideration with his party in the House of Com-
mons and out. — Added in 1839.^

of the Mercantile System,'*'

467

* When the individuals who are so powerful in their own

* conceit, oppress us with their visionary reasons why we should

* abandon all of good that we have tried and proved, I would

* take them, Sir, to the cottage of the poor, — I would set them

* down by the bedside of the man that is ready to perish, — and I

* would demand that there and then we should record the answer

* which they would make, to the complaints of the sufferer

* charging them with being the immediate authors of his distress.
' In what language would they reply to the pathetic declaration,
' that till their innovation cut off the labourer's hire, all without

* was kindness and all within was peace ? — how meet the languid

* eye, that wandered over present desolation, as if to reproach

* them with the comforts they had so cruelly displaced ?'

* But I shall leave these scenes, as too keenly painful to
' humane and Christian feeling, and exciting, it may be, an in-

* tensity of indignation which may be represented as inconsist-

* ent with the immediate exercise of cool and unbiassed judg-

* ment. And how will they answer to an unvarnished state-
' ment, that shall appeal only to those feelings of a more con-

* centrated philanthropy, which whatever may be the obloquy

* it may expose me to, I shall not be ashamed to denominate

* patriotism, and trust to the judgment of such as yet hold to

* the sentiments of wiser and I am sure of better times, for my

* excuse and my protection ? Suppose, then, that I should put

* the case thus : — that I should assume the instance of our

* great and ancient enemy, in whose altered views and harmless

* pohcy if I do not place the implicit faith recommended by

* some around me, I trust it will be imputed only to an intense

* and never-to-be-diminished anxiety for the preservation of

* those blessings {buzz) which the exertions of the brave {cheers

* to the right) and wise {cheers to the left) and good {cheers

* all over) of past times have confided to our keeping. Suppose,
' I will say, that France, by the merest and simplest preference

* of sugar the produce of those " ships, colonies, and com-
' merce" which with so little deference to the opinions of our

* political economists she has never ceased to covet, over sugar

* (for example) the produce of one of the ephemeral republics

* of South America, should effect the creation of a colony,
' another Saint Domingo I will imagine, but free from the

* sources of danger which the state of slavery has been found

* to bring along with it, in short an alter ego, a new and auxi-

* liary department of the South or the South- West, an integral

* portion of territory and dominion, into which shall be trans-

* planted and set to grow with all the rapidity incidental to

* nature's earliest fecundity, whatever of good or evil princi-

* pies, habits, opinions, passions, may be considered as forming

* 2 G 2

468

A Free Traders Defence

* the aggregate which, if the term be not applied to the earths

* and liuids and minerals that constitute the soil, must be what
' is truly to be denominated France. Will our political arith-

* meticians deny that this is an increase to the actual streng^th

* and power, I will not say of our enemy, but of our rival? Will

* they meet me on the ground that a prudent and sagacious

* minister of this kingdom, who should embody those virtues by
' which the country has been saved in times of appalling peril

* {cheers), and by which I humbly trust it will be saved in times

* of still more urgent danger that may be approaching {in-

* creased cheers), would cast this element of strength out of his

* reckoning, and make no additional preparation for the possi-

* ble hostile action of the mass ? Will any of them pit his indi-

* vidual character for understanding, on the assertion that

* France with one or many such colonies, is not more formida-
' ble than France without? I may be told, that they would be

* taken from her in the event of a maritime war. But how if

* the strength derived from them should be employed and with

* success, in crippling the force to which we look for such re-

* suit? And even if all we calculate on should happen, would

* not the mere fact of having to encounter the operation of

* taking such colonies, be a draft upon our national energies, a

* drain and exhaustion quoad, of a portion of what would other-

* wise have been employed against our enemy in other quarters ?
' The honourable gentleman may sneeze, but can he answer ?

* {excessive cheering from all farts). The question has been

* stripped of all the charms of oratory and all the delusions of

* language ; and perhaps I am not too sanguine in believing, that

* from the humble effort of this hour may finally be dated at all

* events some check and alleviation of the ills which destructive

* counsels have poured out in succession on our countrymen.'

' Or if to some the past illustration should appear obsolete,

* and founded rather on the too much forgotten feelings of our

* fathers than on the interests most familiar to the existing
' generation, I might change it for another which may present

* the same argument in a more compressed and thence more

* impressive form. Let the case be put of a colony in the cir-

* cumstances, for example, of Sierra Leone, — or (if it be true

* that the obstacles so constantly opposed to the realization of
' the projects of theoretical benevolence have there been either

* intrinsically less formidable or more successfully overcome,)
' of Liberia ; — and let the question be between procuring the

* requisite provisions or a certain proportion of them, from the

* surrounding natives, or by the establishment of what shall

* be denominated a branch-colony, a detachment of the same

* habits and feelings with the main body left behind, governed

of the Mercantile System^

469

* by the same laws and agreeing in viewing the same objects
' with attachment or aversion, with veneration or abhorrence.

* And suppose, as before, that the present and immediate in-

* terests, — by which I mean those considerations of momentary

* cheapness or the contrary which our political economists are

* so fond of holding out as the only rule and measure of states-

* manlike policy, — are so nearly or exactly balanced, that a
' pure inclination, a simply patriotic or might I not say natural

* preference to the industry of companions and friends, should

* be sufficient to secure (and for the honour of human nature
' I will take for granted that it practically would secure) the

* raising up this new part of the infant society. Barring then

* the vague and morbid philanthropy which would set off against

* this compact and visible advantage to the interests of the

* civilized race, the dispersed and finally very doubtful good

* which might have arisen from increasing the wealth of no

* man can tell what tribes of uncultivated savages, — I will ask

* with confidence whether, if with our senseless refinements we

* do not fiy in the face of the Great Being whose voice maketh

* the hinds to calve and has assigned to every creature an in-

* stinctive preference for its own, here is not a positive good at-

* tained and placed to the account of that portion of the hunxan
' family for whose welfare the Creator has wisely made us prin-
' cipally if not exclusively responsible. *' Spartam nactus es,
" hanc exornaj' was the maxim of the unaided wisdom, or 1

* might almost say piety of the ancients ; for patriotism is in

* my mind so closely connected with reverence of the Power

* which has ordained that in all ages and climates man shall

* prefer his country, as to make the terms almost identical.
' And where, I w^ould gladly be informed by any of the sciolists
' of the present day, is the authority for believing that the broad

* ray of Christianity has removed or weakened any of the obli-

* gations which the imperfect light of nature was sufficient to
' demonstrate and impose?'

' But as one step gained towards the command of an interest-

* ing prospect leads to the discovery of another, so if 1 was not

* afraid of wearying the audience which has heard me with so
' much patience {cheering), I could tender a still more homely

* illustration, and one which will come yet closer to the minds

* and bosoms of many of the sufferers for whom I am at this

* moment a feeble advocate. In this great and eminently civi-

* lized country, where the division of labour in every possible
' direction has been carried to an extent which it is much easier

* to admire than to describe, there is a by no means inconsider-
' able class of the community who derive their support, — and

* it.would be highly contrary to all the cherished habits and
' acknowledged partialities of my individual existence, if I were

470

A Free Tradefs Defence

* to leave it for a moment to be supposed I did not mean their

* merited and honourable support, — from the profession and

* practice of music; a department of human occupation which
' though it may not compete in magnitude with the awful
' interests the conservation of which is so properly the object of

* anxious sohcitude in this place, has at least this in common

* with any of the others, that it requires such exclusive attention
' and application as to unfit the appHcant from either carrying

* on any other gainful employment at the same time, or chang-

* ing with success to any other avocation after the best part of
' his life, the choice and flower of his days, has been devoted to

* this. In such a state of things then, there arrives a professor

* of foreign art. I will not injure the cause I plead for, by un-

* fairly supposing that his powers are imaginary or exist only
' in the sickly feelings or corrupted taste of his audiences ; but
^ I will assume, for the present argument, that there is as exact

* equality as the circumstances are capable of, between him
' and our own countrymen. Neither will I attempt to excite
' prejudice by supposing that his demands or views are extrava-

* gaut or such as tend to revolt the feelings of patriotic humanity
' by comparison wath the pittance of the toil-worn labourer of
' our own country ; — I will not imagine that he is bent on
' building palaces in a foreign land, or on purchasino: titles of

* distinction where unhappily such objects of ambition are to

* be sold ; — but I will assume that he merely meditates a calm

* and competent retreat for his declining years, a modest esta-

* blishment on the banks of the Arno or the Po, such as if it

* could be transferred to our own society would be the reward

* of alas too few, but still the ungrudged reward of successful

* and patriotic industry. Nor will I rest the question on the
' common ground of this retreat being purchased by the abstrac-
' tion of a portion of the circulatinsf medium of the country ; for

* whatever regret I may feel in differing Irom many most esti-

* mable individuals, I cannot avoid thinking that on this ground

* nature (if I may be allowed to use the term with no sceptical
' or irreverent meaning) has benevolently provided against the

* occurrence of evil, and that the carrying away a portion of

* the current coin, so long as it has been obtained by the free
' consent of the holders and the way is open to the influx of the

* precious metals through the ag-ency of those motives by which

* it has been wisely decreed that a diminution in the quantity

* of any coveted production shall of itself create the stimulus
' to the introdution of more, is no otherwise in itself an evil

* than the carrying away of any other article of foreign produce
' which the wisdom of the brightest ages of antiquity has always

* permitted and in fact encouraged our merchants to export.
' Having thus laboured then, to clear away all extraneous

of the " Mercantile System.^^

471

* matter, and give to the opponents every advantage they can

* reasonably desire, I will confine myself to this single question

* {hear), — Is not the mansion by the side of the Arno or the

* Po, created by the corresponding depression and putting

* down of the expected and not unfair reward of some of our

* countrymen at home ; and is it patriotism {hear), or justice

* (hear, hear), or policy {hear, hear, hear), to build up the edi-

* fice in a foreign and possibly at some time a hostile land,

* which might have been added to our domestic sum of happi-

* ness, to our home-bred mass of power, — for. Sir, the public

* happiness is power, — a unit it may be, but still a unit, to

* that aggregate which under the blessing of Providence we will
' show ourselves worthy to enjoy by never ceasing to protect?'

* If on this part of the argument I should carry my audience

* along with me, (and why I should apprehend the contrary,

* even though as individuals they were vastly less endued with

* habits of sound reasoning and practical decision, is what I

* confess myself to be at a loss to understand), I would proceed

* to ask in the first place, whether any of the described benefits

* would be diminished, if the colony, plantation, or detachment,
' instead of being at a greater or smaller distance from the

* geographical limits previously occupied by the main body,
' was actually located within them. Would the agriculture, for

* instance, be less valuable in the eyes of a politician and a

* statesman, because it had robed with verdure or covered with
' waving harvests some integral portion of our ancient domain,

* which without it would have been a desert or a marsh ? Is
' the circumstance of its being remote, in any way essential to

* its value; oris not its importance, on the contrary, incalculably
' increased, by becoming in place as well as in affections an

* integral portion of our country ? And next I would ask,

* if it be undeniable that whether the distance be small or great,

* the substantial benefits respectively described must arise from

* the adoption of what I will take leave to characterize as the
' pure and healthy policy of natural patriotism, does it not

* follow with equal force, that if these benefits can be attained
' by sacrifices of any inferior amount, the difference is public

* gain ? I plead for no gratuitous expenditure, no wasteful or

* unnecessary payment for what might equally be had without ;

* but I put the question to the sound sense and impartiality by

* which I am surrounded, whether in this as in other corre-

* spending cases, the partino: with the smaller amount to obtain

* the greater, is not true policy, and in fact the very essence of

* all by which commercial prosperity is to be courted or pre-
!* served. This is the much abused Mercantile System. This,

* with deference to all to whom deference is due, is the portion

* of the policy of our forefathers which has been selected to "be

472

A Free Trade7^^s Df^ fence

' made the butt of every small wit, the common mark for every

* cramped and contracted genius to practise on. A wise man

* might reasonably hesitate, and a good man tremble to decide,

* whether the fearful ingratitude or abject folly of this conduct,

* may be held to be most insulting to the Creator and injurious

* to his creatures !' (Loud cheering from the Conservative
benches.)

This would be a better defence of the ** mercantile" juggle,
than (whether it be in the portfolios of any of its defenders or
not) has up to this time issued from their presses. Yet it was
written every line with a consciousness of its unsoundness ; a
pure experiment, how easy it is to interlard the merest falla-
cies with clap-traps, and above all with what facility a continual
reference to moral and devotional sentiments may be com-
bined with the worst earthly reasoning and smallest practical
beneficence.

The appeal to " humane and Christian feeling," and all the
tropes therewith connected, may be disposed of by the state-
ment that the appealers created, and at this hour sustain, the
evils they complain of. They have interdicted the industry of
the poor ; and then attach the consequences, to those who oppose
the attempt to relieve one sufferer by the privation of another.
If a shipmaster had conveyed his crew and passengers to a
month's sail from any land, with a week's provision left on
board, and then instead of steering towards any port, should '* do
the pathetic" on the sorrows of one part of his inmates and
the cruelty of not assisting them by taking from the portions of
some other, — he would present the express image of such hu-
manity and such Christianity. It would not be that there was
not suffering, and that humanity did not desire to relieve it ;
but that the mode proposed was, like the Factory Bill, a fraud
got up by the authors of the general misery, having in view
the preservation and increase of that misery, through the in-
strumentality of the dupes who should be induced to cry out for
the removal of the minor evil to the perpetuation of the greater.

But the mathematics of the proposition are the important
part. And first for the '* Saint Domingo" theory. The as-
sertion then is, that if France by a simple patriotic preference
of her colonial sugars to South American (the prices in the
market being supposed the same) raises up a splendid colony
in Saint Domingo, she gains the Saint Domingo. The answer
to which is, that all she gains in the existence of her Saint Do-
mingo, she gives up in the non-existence of an equal quantity
of wealth and power of some kind, that might have been raised
up within her own borders by employing the enterprize and
capital sent to Saint Domingo, in another way at home. If the

of the *' Mercantile ^ystemP

473

people who would have created the goods at home for barter
with South American sugar, would have demanded payment, —
so do the colonists. If the colonists spend this money on such
produce of the mother country as they want for their processes
and personal consumption, — so would they have done if they
had staid at home and applied their capital and industry to
creating the goods for barter with South America.

The best key to the solution of this problem, is in taking the
diminished case ; for magnitude has a wonderful eifect in con-
fusing men's ideas, and causing the loss of the clue to sound
conclusions. Take then the case of the little African settle-
ment, and suppose that a hundred tons of rice can be grovm
annually in the proposed branch-colony by the labour of a hun-
dred individuals, and that there are a hundred individuals in
the primary settlement to whom from their habits and other
concomitant circumstances it is indifferent whether they go
forth to raise these hundred tons at the distance of it may be a
hundred furlongs, or apply themselves at home to create or
collect such articles of produce as either directly or by means of
some circuitous exchange (as for instance let them cut down
timber and exchange it with shipping for silver or for gun-
powder) shall procure a hundred tons of rice from the surround-
ing natives. Under these circumstances there would seem to
be no difhculty in conceding, that putting out of sight what may
be called accidental considerations, the case is one of balance.
If the governor of the greater Barataria wants an outpost a
hundred furlongs off, to watch or check some apprehended
enemy, the branch-colony may chance to answer this purpose,
and so far save the expense of a lieutenant's party ; or if on
the other hand a division of his forces would be an evil, this
might be a reason for keeping the hundred individuals at home.
But either of these is a purely accidental consideration, and of
no effect upon the general question. If then the governor hap-
pening to have an agricultural and colonizing crotchet, should
encourage the hundred individuals to go out and establish
the branch, and should boast of its establishment as a
visible step taken at the instigation of his genius towards the
general prosperity ; it would be in the power of any man to
answer him, that all that had been done in the way of colo-
nizing abroad, had been effected by the removal of an equiva-
lent portion of a timber trade at home, and therefore the diffe-
rence, if any, reduced itself to the diiierence there might be
between having the same number of individuals posted at a
distance and at home. And if on the other hand, the governor
had nice notions of compactness and rather a high opinion of his
personal presence, — was in short a little fidgety at the idea of

474

A Free Trade?'' s Defence

so many precious souls bein^ left to follow their own devices
out of sight, — he would probably throw cold water on the
branch project, and harangue on the advantages of union and
domestic industry. But on this side also it would be plain,
that as concerns the general question, His Excellency's opi-
nion was wool-gathering, and that the true and simple state of
the case is, that the two courses are indifferent, and all the
wisdom of the officials cannot make it otherwise.

If in this state of things any argument were attempted to be
got up, touching the advantage that would arise to the domes-
tic manufactures of the parent colony from having to supply
the wants of the branch establishment ; it would be plain that
the same individuals who were to use manufactures a hundred
furlongs off, would also have used manufactures if they had
been carrying on a timber trade at home, and consequently,
though there might be some change made in the kind of ma-
nufactures demanded for consumption, there could be none in
the aggregate, and all plans, pleas, or pretences, for raising up
an aggregate increase to the manufacturing interest either by
sending out the branch settlement or the contrary, would be
shadow and smoke. And the same conclusion would hold good
of any attempt to decide one way or the other by the love of
countrymen or of their industry ; unless reason could be shown
why men should love a rice-planting countryman and his in-
dustry, and should not love a timber- cutting one.

If in the progress of events a decided leaning should be dis-
played towards one course rather than the other, — as for
instance if a number of individuals should voluntarily remove
themselves to the branch-settlement, and establish the fact of
their prosperity by offering more rice, and consequently at a
somewhat lower price, than appeared in the market antece-
dently to their new speculation ; — and if the Governor, acting
upon his love for compa,ctness and his dislike of what he might
be pleased to view as a species of schism prejudicial to his
authority, should lay a tax on the rice of the branch-colony by
way of wholesome check to such irregular proceedings :— it
would be palpable that he was in reality forcing men to take
the worse mode of rice-making instead of the better, and so far
injuring and keeping back the welfare of the community. And
if in the pride of hislieart he should take some superior officer
round his wood-cutting establishments, and dilate upon the im-
portance of the interest which had thus been created by the act
of his legislatorial wisdom, it would be competent to any malig-
nant rice-eater to interject, that all this had been done at the
expense of destroving something of greater worth that might
have been, and that the proof was in the tax which it had been

of the ^^Mercantile Sy sterna

475

necessary to lay in order to prevent the other from growing up
instead.

So on the other hand if the attempt at the branch-colony had
been made, but it had been discovered that the adventurers
could not keep soul and body together by furnishing rice at the
old market prices ; — and if the Governor in his zeal for foreign
progress had proceeded to prop up this slight deficiency by
taxing the rice which should be procured in exchange for the
industry of wood-cutters ; — it would be as plain as in the other
case, that the greater had been sacrificed for the less, and that
the Sancho Panza who should point to his distant settlement
as the offspring of his genius and his policy, would have only
shown that he was fitter for watching the frying-pans of a fat
kitchen, than for regulating the interests of assemblages of his
fellow-men.

The sole measure then of the general utility or harmfulness
of such a distant establishment for raising any particular kind
of produce in preference to procuring it from foreigners by ex-
change, whatever be the scale, (excluding the very limited cir-
cumstances under which there may be question of the policy
of making temporary advances in expectation of distant returns),
is to be looked for in the fact of its being profitable to the con-
ductors or the contrary, under a state of non-interference. If
the establishment has been gainfully carried on under the free
competition of all men, there is ground for pronouncing that
the community cannot have lost ; though not for attempting to
show off the whole of the distant establishment as again to the
society that could not have been obtained without it. On the
contrary the fact may be, that there has been neither gain nor
loss ; — that the establishment abroad has been created by the
removal of a precisely equal quantity of prosperity of some kind
that might have been created at home, or at all events of a
quantity inferior only by the least that was required to turn the
scale. Butif the cockered and favoured establishment, (whether
it be an establishment for producing cane sugar in Saint Do-
mingo, or beet sugar at home), has been raised by the operation
of bounties or duties laid on other sugar in its^ behalf, — then
there is evidence that a pint has been produced by the sacri-
fice of a quart, and there has been a distinct piece of foolery
somewhere. But what is true in respect of domestic interests,
is equally true of foreign. A Saint Domingo can be no acces-
sion of strength to France as regards foreign powers, if it has
been only an integral part cut out of what would otherwise
have been her wealth and strength within her own borders ;—
still less if it has been raised up by the sacrifice and destruc-

476

A Free Trader s Defence

tion of a greater quantity of wealth and strength that might
have heen, at home.

The third or last statement, — which invites a comparison
between the house raised for the foreign musician on the banks
of the Arno or the Po, and the house which might be raised up
in Regent Street for his English rival if the public would only
patronize home-made music instead, — is founded on keeping
out of sight the house or houses, or other benefit equivalent
in the whole however subdivided, accruing to the dealers in
those goods in which the payment on the Arno or the Po is
veritably made. If instead of other goods the payment should
be made in gold either coined or rude, then the benefit, be it
great or small, is to the dealers in the British manufactures di-
rectly or indirectly transmitted to Peru or elsewhere in conse-
quence, for gold to fill up the void ; and if it is not in gold,
then to the dealers in the wares concerned. The importation of
a Roman harper, to be paid with a country-house upon the Tiber,
is in no way essentially different from the importation of
Roman harp-strings, to be paid for to Rofino and Co. with a house
in the neighbourhood of the Forum Boarium. It is not the
house in Rome, that is the English interest to be set olf against
the house which might be raised for the maker of English harp-
strings by a prohibition ; but it is the house, or benefit equiva-
lent, that is to be raised for some individual or class of British
traders, who are to be the means and instrument of procuring
the Roman harp-strings, and whose trade will be wantonly and
uselessly put down by prohibition of the foreign article, leaving
no national balance except the loss, detriment, or grumbling of
the consumer of harp-strings, who is obliged to use bad in the
place of good, for no earthly benefit to his country's commerce
in the aggregate, but simply to please the fancy which some-
body has taken for bad harp-strings being made in England.
And in this there is nothing but what is common to all cases.
Take, for example, the French silks ; — and it is not the country-
house of the capitalist at Lyons that is to be set olf against the
rus in urbe of the master monopolist of Spital-Fields, but it is
the improved living, whether embodying itself in houses or any
other form, of all the British workmen and manufacturers who
would in a state of freedom be employed by the demand for
goods to be exchanged for silks in France, and by the further
expenditure of the difi'erence left with the consumer by the ab-
sence of the monopoly, — to all which must be added, as what
finally remains upon the balance of the account, an amount
equal to this last-mentioned expenditure over again, in the
shape of the gain to the consumer, or if preferred, his enjoy-
ment of the additional articles procured for hun by the expen-

of the '^Mercantile System.''^

477

diture. If instead of paying a higher price for the same article,
the effect of the monopoly is to make the consumer pay the
same price for what he considers inferior ; then there is an exact
balance as before on the gains and losses exclusive of the con-
sumer's, and what finally remains on the negative or losing
side of the account is the vexation, grief, or in one word loss of
the consumer, in being made to give the price of the better for
what he considers the inferior article, for no advantage to the
rest of the community in the aggregate, and for no man's benefit
but the dishonest one's who is anxious to secure sixpence
to himself by dint of taking a greater amount from other
people.

The case where foreign goods should be paid for with coins
taken from the circulating medium, may be dilated on more at
large, since the opponent seems to stand upon it ; though it was
supposed that this portion of the currency juggle had long since
been abandoned. Every government that coins gold, does it by
some rule or other having reference to the market price of-
bullion. Some coin as long as ever the coins will buy as
much metal as is contained in themselves, and the least
quantity more that will induce men to take the trouble of ask-
ing to have standard bulUon exchanged for an equal weight in
coins. Others, wiser, coin no longer than men will give for the
coins their weight in metal, and as much more as will pay for
the fair expense of coining. But whether the government takes
the wisest rule or not, it takes some rule. And if coins are abs-
tracted from the circulation and sent abroad in payment for
foreign goods, the consequence is (as is in fact insisted on by
the opponents) to make money prices fall or the coin buy more
of goods of any kind than it did before, till the state of the
circulation is restored. It must therefore buy more bullion ;
and the consequence of this change in the price of bullion, is to
put the government, the moment the diff'erence amounts to as
much as will turn the scale, upon buying more gold to make into
coins ; which addition to the demand for gold, creates j ust as real
an addition to the demand for some British manufactures or
other, as an addition to the demand for Turkey cofl'ee or any other
article that is the subject of a transit trade. Do the Tories think
gold and gold coins are found in parsley-beds, or under apple-
trees? or in what way do they think the supply is regulated, but by
the same rules that direct the procreation of any other sublunary
ware ? If the markets in the gold countries are already " glutted
with English goods," a new demand for ten thousand ounces
of gold will not be a whit less a god-send to the English owners.
If they are involved to the amount of 100,000/., it may be only
40,000/. towards their deliverance ; but 40,000/. to a man's ac-

478 A Free Trader's Defence of the *' Mercantile System'" s

count is 40,000/., whether he may chance to be involved to the
amount of 60,000/. more or not. There is an end therefore of
the Tory miracle, of our gold running out of circulation at the
rate of a million a-year, and still the wretches being able to find
a guinea to fee a doctor with ; — for it is the story of the horn
given to Thor to drain, which communicated with the sea be-
hind. This is the answer to the " circulation'' fallacy ; an answer
quite competent to show, that there is no harm in foreign goods
being paid for in sovereigns if it is so, but on the contrary as
much good as in any other transit trade. At the same time
the fact is understood to be, that French goods are not paid for
by a transit of either sovereigns or bullion, but by certain de-
scriptions of English manufactures openly transmitted through
the custom-houses to countries bordering on France, and thence
conveyed to their destination through the agency of what
has been denominated " God Almighty's knight-errant in de-
fence of honest people against knaves and blockheads," — the
smuggler. There is no use in making a secret of it ; the time can-
not be far off when any government will be considered as out of
the pale of civilized powers, that keeps a custom-house officer.

The above is all, the introduction of which appeared to hold
out a competent motive for reference to the Article quoted from.
The subsequent attacks on the supporters of Free Trade, are
such as, though they may confirm the foolish in their folly, will
lead the inquiring mass to examine for themselves in the
writings of the other side whether these things are so or not ; and
the result can only be favourable to the truth. There needs
little prompting to find out, that when Mr. Booth says, though
*'the general reasoner is satisfied," the *' merchants and parties
interested are dissatisfied with the unavoidable conclusion," —
he means " the merchants and parties interested in the preserva-
tion of the monopoly." For example, when the makers of
cotton-twist at Blackburn brood over the fact that French silks
are chiefly paid for in their twist (albeit through the interven-
tion of the smuggler), — it would require more evidence than
has yet been produced, to prove that the merchants and
manvfacturers of Blackburn are dissatisfied with the unavoid-
able conclusion." In the same way when the Westminster
Review is asked to point to a single branch of trade or manu-
facture which has been benefited by the nostrums of the
theorists," — if the meaning is that it should point to any
branch of trade where the traders rejoice at the lo5S of what
they consider a gainful monopoly, the question is a hard and
cruel one. But if the design was to ask whether any branch
could be pointed out which had been benefited by the removal
of the monopoly of any other branch, the Blackburn instance is
ready in point ; and it is equally demonstrable in any other case,

London University Magazine; Note on <^c. 479

that the foreign goods imported through the destruction of a
monopoly, must be either paid for with the goods of some Black-
burn or other, or (which nobody is given to beheve) procured
for nothing. It may not be *' fun" for a man to give up six-
pence he gains by a dishonest monopoly ; but still less is it
*' fun" for honest men to give up ninepence, that sixpence of
it may go into the pocket of the other.

Of the same cast and quahty is the attempt to quarrel with
the demanded substitution of " universal'* for " abstract" prin-
ciples. Of course " universal principles" meant principles
** universal [as the Americans say] if true ;" it certainly did
not^^mean " universal if false." There was no attempt to bar
debate whether any set of principles was true or not ; but only to
point out and maintain, that there are certain principles of which
it is possible to ascertain by experiment and the use of reason,
that if they are true at all they are true universally. It is a
stale discovery to add, that those who delight to call themselves
the " practical men," are men who insist on looking at one side
only of the practical question, and those they call " theorists"
look at all. The so-called " theorist" builds his conclusions
on practical data as well as the other ; he makes out a regular
debtor and creditor account, ending in a balance of loss. The
man who assumes to himself the title of "practical," declares
he has a theory, that it is proper to look only at one side.

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1833.

Art. V. — London University Magazzfie, No, IL for July 1S33. Nofe
on ^' Austins Province of Jurisyrudence Determined^'' p. 137. —
London ; J. M^Gowan.

^HE Tories hate the London University, as they hate an om-

nibus or a cabriolet, and for the same reason. It is quite
clear that something has been done by it for the middle and
under classes ; therefore in their eyes it is beastly like the
owners, and the branch despots and their toad-eaters abhor it
as they love an Inquisitor or a Cossack. The combat d Id mort
was of their own beginning ; and though they may wound the
people's heel, the end will be to bruise^-the serpent's head.
In this view it is especially fortunate when the enemy will
bestow his venom on the rising generation. Every pubescent
youth now shaving for a beard in the vicinity of Gower-Street,
is destined to tell his children if he lives to have any, how
in his time the *' all slavery" party in England, — who wherever
two or three were gathered together to oppress, w^ere there in
the midst of them, — were strong enough to call their betters
ill names by their hirelings, and show^ their faces in an occasional
majority in a Second Chamber.

480

London University 3Iagazi?ie ;

These same youths, without longer tarrying at Jericho, have
resolved on setting up a pubhcation ; — by far the best mode of
study, if conducted with moderate judgment and feUcity, of
any that can befall the human scholar in the interval between
childhood and seniUty. The stimulus to exactness, the oppor-
tunity of comparison with subsequent performances and those
of others, the power of being known or not, the ready and almost
indestructible faculty of reference, — all point out this as a sort
of steam-engine improvement on the ways in which men have
been wont to cultivate the talents they possessed. The warn-
ings to be offered are fevv ;^ — to despise rhetoric, and eschew
fine writing ; — to be always afraid of having too much to say,
never of too little ; — to ware flippancy and bad jokes ; — to avoid
epithets, and all but annihilate adverbs ; — to let the last thing
ever brought before the reader, be the two-legged thing sitting
on a three-legged stool, that writes, — or what he thinks, he feels,
and he will or will not perform. If the dunce has a reason for
" thinking," why does not he give it ? If he has not, why
does not he say nothing about it ? And farthest of all, —
procul ah amicis, — be the degrading'* /F*?," — the effort of one
blockhead to gain importance by representing himself as many.
As an experiment, let any person who has fallen into this
lowest slough of humility, resolutely purge his performance of
the filthy figure, and see if it has not the same kind of effect, that
a clean shirt and a razor have upon the miserable who was in
want of them. Along with these provisions, let there be some
object, and always "to edification;" — something to be made
clear, if it be only to the writer ; — some invitation to a friendly
passage of arms, for the sharpening of two parties at once to
the defence of the common truth ; — something to be done
or prepared for, which the man may point to hereafter and say,
" See how long it is, since I began to labour in the attempt
to be of use."

This is by the way; the original purpose having been only
to take up a question on which both the original and the com-
mentary seem to leave sometnuig to be added. The matter
in dispute, is the propriety of resistance to bad government.
And the defect of both the original and the commentary, ap-
pears to be that this question is confounded with the propriety
of submission to government in the abstract. Is it proper to
pay bills at taverns ? Is it right to eat eggs ? The severest
moralist will allow that it is at least permitted. But is it in-
cumbent to pay fraudulent bills ? Is it a moral duty to eat
rotten eggs ?

The answer to this is clearly, " Not if you can help it." If
you cannot help it, the case is altered ; and whether you can or

Note on Austin's Jurisprudence. 481

not, must be determined on knowledge of the circumstances of
the case. When it is announced as an inflexible rule of mo-
rahty, that, for instance, no man is on any account to steal ;
what is asserted is, that it is for the general happiness that no
man, however useful it might be to himself, is to be allowed in
any particular case to steal ;— that it is a point settled, signed,
and sealed with the signet of mankind in their corporate capa-
city, that the good which may arise to any man or men from a
particular act of stealing, never will or can overbalance the evil
which, directly or indirectly, would arise in the end from the
permission. But is there any such acknowledgment on the
subject of submission to bad government ? or is there not on
the contrary a general avowal, that resistance to bad govern-
ment, is and always has been, the grand instrument of human
happiness, the spade, the pick- axe, the crow-bar, by the reso-
lute and sagacious use of which is won and kept, all that the
least of us has of comfort or well-being ; — that in fact if there
be any virtue or any praise,

*'It is this — it is this."

The whole postulate that requires submission to bad govern-
ment at all, is like the postulate that should demand the eating
of rotten eggs ; there is a failure to make out any obligation to
begin with. If indeed any quantity of extraneous evil be
hanging over the non-performance, — as, for example, if a san-
guinary savage were waving a scimitar over the recusant, — it
would be the part of a wise man to compare the two evils. Or
in like manner, if a traveller was charged for twenty dinners
he had never eaten, in a country where the attempt at com-
plaint woukl probably be followed by the bastinado if not the
i)ow-string, — he might do quite right on reflection to put up
with the injury. But this is the moral duty of out of two evils
chusing the least ; not any abstract duty of paying for dinners
that were never had. To maintain such a duty in the abstract,
would in fact be overthrowing what security for justice the
world may have, and setting up the hugest Moloch of immora-
lity that rogues could desire in its place; and just the same
would be the consequence of setting up the doctrine that bad
governments are not to be resisted.

If any man in defence of overcharged dinners, should urge
the great utility of taverns, and the desperate consequences
that would arise to the community from their bills not being
paid ; he would be answered that this was true oijust bills, but
not in the slightest degree of unjust. No man wants to hurt
honest tavern-keepers, nor decent governments ; but their use
will not consecrate their abuse. It is no more true that the

VOL. II. 2 H

482

Otto on the Violin,

alternative is between submitting to bad governments and
having no government at all, than that it is between eating
rotten eggs and having no eggs brought to market at all. There
is an aristocratical or governmental fraud in the assertion, that
it is necessary to coax governments into existence by the en-
durance of their misdeeds ; — they will bear a great deal of
mending and still consent to act. It is not true that there is
the asserted connexion between touching a bad government
and anarchy. It may be true enough that all bad governments
when touched cry " anarchy but history has proved that
what they call anarchy is the life's blood of honest men, the
one sole thing by which they live and flourish.

The mistake then, is simply in supposing that submission to
bad government is to be classed among moral duties at all ; —
or more strictly in overlooking, that resistance to bad govern-
ment is the moral duty, whenever the probable advantages of
success are greater than the probable suffering from opposition.
It is in fact the case of resistance to any kind of robbery and
mischief. Men must after all be responsible for exercising a
sound discretion as to consequences ; as a man must be re-
sponsible who chuses to fire on a superior number of armed
highwaymen. But the moral duty is in impartially estimating
the probabilities of success in the particular case : not in giving
a carte blanche to all present and future minions of the moon.
Hear what Blackwood's Magazine quotes from Burke, with
only a change of name for the subject on the table.

^ Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power^ are alike
criminal. There is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his
power, wherever it shall shew its face in the world. It is a crime to
bear it. when it can be rationally shaken off. Nothing but absolute
impotence can justify men in not resisting it to the utmost of their
ability*.'

Westminster Review, 1 October, 1833.

Art. XII. — Treatise on the Construction, Preservation^ Repair, and
Improvement^ of the Violin, and all Bow Instrmnents, together with
a Dissertation on the most eminent 3Iakers, pointing out the surest
Marks htj tvhich a genuine Instrument may be distinguished. By
Jacob Augustus Otto, Instrument Maker to the Court of the
Archduke of Weimar. Translated from the German, with Notes
and Additions, by Thomas Fardeley^ Professor of Languages
and Music, Leeds.' — London ; Longman. Svo. pp.66. 1833.

" riiHERE is an art in everything;" as a late mathematical
professor and dignitary of the church, of Cambridge, said

on seeing a glass of the poor (creature small beer scientifically

* Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCXII. for Sept. 18c^3, p. 33i.

Otto on the Violin.

483

filled by a London waiter. As it is difficult to yield assent to the
creed of a Yorkshire ploughman, that there are three hundred
and sixty-five bones in a pig's foot ; so, who would have believed
there were fifty-eight pieces in a fiddle, and yet it seems it is
so, upon the authority of Herr Otto, Musical-Instrument Maker
to the Court of the Archduke of Weimar and the University of
Halle besides, at which last-mentioned city and seat of know-
ledge, together with his two sons, he undertakes the trial
and probation of Violins, and will be happy lo attend to any
communications from his patrons and friends." He has more-
over " now had thirty years practical experience in the resto-
ration of such ill-fated instruments" as have got into the hands
of repairers,~a crying evil under the sun, — "and the con-
struction of new ones, and has besides this studied music, ma-
thematics, physics, and acoustics," — from which he thinks
himself qualified to grapple with those other sources of human
error and disappointment no less worthy than the preceding of
the attention of the utilitarian and philosopher, through which
" parents of accomplished minds" have frequently gone to
the expense of ten pistoles for a Violin, which was worth
scarcely as many dollars." There is considerable art in this
climax ; — no fee grief, but a whole family, an accomplished one
too, lamenting over a disappointment in a violin.

* The Violin justly holds a pre-eminent rank amongst all instru-
ments played with the bow [and it mit^ht have been added, without\
It may indeed be termed a perfect instrument, as by the peculiarity
of its construction, the minutest gradation of tone can be produced
upon it.' — 1.

Old Mersennus and nobody else, has the credit of finding
this out, at a time when the Violin without frets was only be-
ginning to be considered as a practicable instrument, and
antecedently, it is imagined, to the establishment of that
orchestra by Louis XIV, or its imitation by Charles the Second,
which the musical antiquary recognizes as commemorated in
the ditty of " Four-and-twenty fiddlers, all in a row.''

Passing by Statelmann of Vienna, Jauch of Dresden,
Whithalm of Nuremberg, Hoff'man and Hunger of Leipzig,
Buchstaedter of Ratisbon, Hassert of Rudolstadt and him of
Eisenach, Klotz in the Tyrol, Ranch of Breslaw and the other
of Wiirtzburg, Riess of Bamberg, Scheinlein of Langenfeld,
Ruppert of Erfurth, Francis and George Schonger and Bach-
mann of Berlin, and Straube of the same favoured place, Ulri-
cus Eberle and Charles Helmer of Prague, Samuel Fritzsche
of Leipzig, Durfel of Altenburg, Schmidt of Cassel, and many
others, — all great men in their generation, each sitting at this

2 H 2

484

Otto on the Violin.

hour under his vine and fig-tree, and able to furnish a violin
might win Eurydice from the infernal gods, — the principal
head of dispute appears to be l)etween the flat model and the
deep. The approved result may be assumed to be, that the
tiat model makes most noise, but the deep has the most sweet-
ness, and it might be added variety, of tone. This last quality
is conspicuous in the case of guitars ; and it is presumable
that the same will hold in all other instruments that come
under the head of ''fldibus canons^ The flat instrument is
well for a rant or a rattle ; but it is the deep one that has
*' the tones."

In violin-build in 2: as in ship-building, it might easily happen,
that the choice models of a hundred and fifty years ago should
be easily surpassed. Among them there must be a best ; but
who knows but there may be a better than the best ? Has
anybody tried ? For example, is it written in the tablets of
any of the makers above cited from Statelmann to Schmidt,
what would be the qualities of a violin of double the ordinary
depth, other dimensions remaining unaltered, — what of one of
half, — what would be the effect of adding or subtracting some
given quantity to the dimensions all round*, — what of applying
the neck of a violin to the body of a tenor, and putting on the
strings of a violin? Nobody could be so favourably situated
for experiments of this nature as a great maker ; who might
trace the consequences of gradual alterations, in a way that
would not prevent the instruments from being as saleable as
before. And there would be no necessity for the experiments
being made upon instruments of the first quality and value ;
for it is presumable that what produced a comparative improve-
ment in one kind would do it in another. Pardon of all the
Herrn, if this has been done, and it has been ascertained that
the true proportion, the Medicean form of fiddles, is in the pre-
cise Cremonese model of 170 years ago and no where else.
Rut if this has been done with violins, it has not been done with
shipping ; and a ship is a machine in the improvement of which
a larger mass of interests is daily and hourly concerned.

Herr Otto has also been a copiovis maker of guitars, and
rejoices in having been the first man that ever put a sixth string
to an instrument of that kind.

*■ The late Duchess Amelia of Weimar having introduced the
Guitar into Weimar, in 1788, I was immediately obliged to com-

* The writer of this once undertook to try the effect of adding an inch in all
directions to the dimensions of a guitar; hut the maker could not find in his
heart to add it to the depth, and so let down the experiment. The instrument
produced, was powerful in the bass strings, but not improved in the treble.

Otto on the Violin.

485

mence making imitations of this instrument for several noblemen,
which soon obtained so high a rei)ute in Leipzig, Dresden, and Ber-
lin^ that for sixteen years 1 had more orders in hand than I could
execute.'

' 1 must in this place observe that the Guitar had originalh'- five
strings only. The late Herr Naumann, Maitre de Chapelle, at
Dresden, gave me the order for the first Guitar with the sixth or low
E string, which I added according to his instructions. Since then
the Guitar has always had six strings, for which improvement ama-
teurs have to thank Herr Naumann.' — p. 41.

In his experiments on different parts of his instruments, the
author dues not appear to have made any on the tail-piece.
For the chance of this coming under his or other experienced
eyes, repetition is made of the fact mentioned in a former
Number*, that in a guitar with a tail-piece the tone was greatly
diminished; and on the other hand, was increased considerably
above the ordinary, by attaching each string to a separate pin
at the back of the instrument. But there arose the defect, of
the string being unsteady in pitch, in consequence of the elas-
ticity of the added part ; an evil which might possibly be reme-
died by attaching each string to a separate steel wire reaching
nearly to the bridge.

The book concludes with a theory concerning the improve-
ment made on instruments of the viol kind by playing on
them in certain described ways; which, without scrutiny of
any kind, is given entire.

^ That it is not age, but the constant use of an instrument v/hich
produces a smooth clear tone, is an incontrovertible fact.'

* 1 have by me some common-made Violins which had been used
by a village musician for twenty years in playing dances, and being
in a damaged state 1 bought them at a very trifling price. Finding,
upon examination, that they were strong throughout m the wood, and
had good red deal bellies,! tried what could be made of them by giving
them the true proportions, and succeeded in obtaining a Violin, which,
although every connoisseur immediately knew to beatrade fiddle, yet
the tone turned out by no means inferior to an Italian one. I sold it
to the concert director at Fulda for forty dt)llars. From this circum-
stance the idea occurred to me that a vibration kept up for a length of
time tended to extract the resinous particles from the wood, and make
it more porous and better adapted for producing a good tone, and
such is the fact. This induced me further to try what improvement
in the tone could be effected ly a constant playing of two tones in
fifths : after an hour's exercise in this manner, these two tones became
much less rough and glassier than any other in the instrument.
Having now discovered that two tones played together with a strong

* For Oct, 1832, Art. 4. See page 283 of the present Volume.

4S6 The Question of Absenteeism reducible

bow produced a greater volume of vibration, I then tried it by
fourths throughout all the tones. They all experieac-ed alike the
desired improvement, and A sharp and C sharp were equally as good
as D or G. The reason of this singular effect my duty to my family
prevents me from, divulging. [It should rather have prevented di-
vulging the way in which the improvement was effected.^ 1 shall
however notice the alterations it produces in the tone of the in-
strument* When the instrument is first put into use the tone is
clear and easily brought out. By practising it, however, eight
days in the manner above, the tone becomes harsh and offensive to
the ear and difficult of production : the instrument then appears as if
it would never be fit to be heard again. In this second stage the
greatest number of instruments are spoilt, from the want of patience
ni the professor or dilettante, by scraping out the wood, alteration of
the bass bar and other contrivances. Those that are weak in wood
become bad in this process, and never afterwards improve. They
never reach the third period. But by persevering in exercising on two
tones together it gradually reaches the third period, as the instrument,
like wax, receives every impression, and eventually recovers its fullness
and power. It then becomes easy in the tone, and acquires the beauty
of an instrument which has been long in use. This, however, requires
three months continual practice. A Violin proved in this manner
cannot be afforded under thirty dollars, nor a Bass under fifty.'
p. 63.

The Instrument-Maker to the Court of the Archduke of
Weimar should employ a steam fiddler. What class of men
can it be that is employed in educating fiddles at the salary of
apparently a shilling a-day ? Can no means be devised, to
make a " vibration'' that shall do the work of three months in
a week? Is there no Lancasterian or Hamiltonian system, or
enseignement mutuel, that could be applied to train up many
viols in the time of one ? It would be for the credit of German
genius, that something should be done in this way.

Westminster Review, 1 Octoher, 1833.

AuT. XVI. — The Evils which afflict Ireland referred to Primogeniture^
the Laws of Entail, and the Legislative Union of that Country with
England.-— London; Effingham Wilson. 8vo. pp. 40. 183J.

A BATTERED subject like Absenteeism would not be in-
troduced here, unless from the notion of having some-
thino- to say upon it that may tend towards the removal of this
opprobriuTU of Political Economy. And the object is now to
trv to show, for the consolation of such as may be distressed by
representations like those in the pamphlet cited, that the ques-
tion will resolve itself into a corollary from the principles of

to the Principles of Free Trade,

487

Free Trade, or more strictly perhaps, a complicated modification
of the general proposition.

Take then, as the simplest and First Case, that of a man
who is told it would be patriotic to drink ale, but prefers claret.
" If you will drink ale," says his adviser, you will do a mani-
" fest good to malt and hop growers, who are your dear country-
" men." " If I drink claret," says the respondent, *' an order

must be given to somebody for British goods to pay for it
** with, which would not have been given without ; — as for in-
" stance to the men of Sheffield, who are as dear countrymen
** as the other." And if attempts were made to puzzle the
question by supposing the claret to be paid for in Turkey coffee
or Peruvian ingots, he would reply that the transit trade, — the
buying of a bag of coffee in Turkey, or a wedge of gold in South
America, for the purpose of being finally exchanged for his
claret, — was j ust as good as any other trade, as concerns the
necessity of an order for some British goods or other from the
makers or producers. Or if a daring adversary pushed him
with the further refinement of supposing his claret to be paid
for with sovereigns taken from what the Tories affectionately
call our circulating medium ;" he would answer, that the only
consequence of this would be to set the government upon
making new purchases of gold, for the purpose of coining to
supply the void, — which just as much causes a new order for
British goods from somebody, as any other of the processes
supposed*. In all of which, the pith is, that the man's claret-

* The mode in which the demand for coining is brought about, has been gone
into in the Article entitled A Free Trader's Defence of the Mercantile System.
See page 477 of the present Volume.

It is farther worth notice, that nature has not left it to depend upon the wis-
dom of the government or anybody else, whether a gain to counterbalance the
privations of the ale-dealers shall arise somewhere or not. If the government
has not wit to coin when men will give more for the coins than they cost, the
only consequence will be, that the place where the gain arises (the locus of the
gain, as a natural philosopher might call it) will be shifted. Instead of a gain
to dealers in goods demanded to pay for new gold, there will be a gain of exactly
the same aggregate magnitude, to the holders of the coinage that is left ; in con-
sequence of the value of their coins having risen in their pockets. This change
of value will further cause a certain advantage to all old creditors, and an equal
disadvantage to their debtors ; which, on the mere question of account, may be
set off against each other. There is therefore in the final aggregate, only a shift-
ing of the locus of the gain that is to counterbalance the privations of the ale
dealers ; and the same conclusion, if the inquirer is disposed to be so minute,
may be applied to the small diminution in the number of coins, which will be
required to turn the scale and set the government upon coining.

If instead of new coins there should be an issue of paper by either public or
private bankers, then the gain that is to counterbalance the privations of the
ale-dealers must be looked for in the strong boxes of such bankers and their
confederates, or wherever else they may have bestowed it. But somewhere the
gain is ; earth will not hide it, nor sea cover. It may be dissipated or divided ;
but it is as impossible to annihilate it, as to annihilate a particle of matter. —
This is some of the physico-theology of Political Economy.

488 The Question of Absenteeism reducible

drinking causes a new and additional order to be given for
Sheffield goods or some other kind, just as much as his drinking
ale instead would have caused a new and additional order to be
given for ale ; and that, razors against ale, there is no reason
why encouraging the one is not as good for the commerce of
the country as the other.

Second Case; Suppose the claret-lover to be at the same
time the Sheffield manufacturer ; and let him pay for his claret
to a wine- merchant in money. This is virtually the same
case as the last ; for the union of the claret-drinker and cutler
in the same individual, produces no ulterior effect upon any-
thing.

Third Case ; let the claret-loving Sheffield manufacturer be
his own wine-merchant, and send cutlery of his own making,
to be bartered at Bordeaux for the desired claret for his own
consumption. And further let it be supposed that he has sent
all his stock of cutlery into the market the day before ; in con-
sequence of which he goes into the market with money and
repurchases a box of it, to be forwarded to Bordeaux. In this
case again, all the essential circumstances are unaltered. His
going into the market and buying the box of cutlery, is just as
much a new order in the cutlery market, contingent upon his
resolution to drink claret and that would not have existed with-
out it, as would have taken place if the business had been put
into the hands of a professional wine-merchant.

Fourth Case ; instead of having the box of cutlery to repur-
chase, let him send it at once to Bordeaux from his own ware-
house, without ever allowing it to show its face in the home
market at all. How, in this case, is the benefit to cutlers pre-
served? Clearly by the fact that sending any quantity of
cutlery into the home market and taking it out again, — or
never sending it at all, — are to all intents and purposes con-
cerned, one thing and the same. Let a thousand boxes be
what can be sold with the needful profits in the home market, —
and if the Bordeaux box had made one, there could only be
999 of other people's. But either remove the Bordeaux box
or keep it out of the market altogether, and there will be a
demand for 1000 of other people's instead of 999 ; which is one
more than before. Either the removal of the Bordeaux box or
keeping it out of the home market altogether, is therefore tan-
tamount to causing an order to the Sheffield trade for one new
box of cutlery, or in other words for one box of cutlery that
never would have been ordered if the Bordeaux box had been
thrust into the home market instead of being sent abroad. In
like manner, universally, finding a market for any kind of
goods abroad, is tantamount to causing a new order to some-

to the Principles of Free Trade, 4i59

body for an equal quantity of goods at home, and benefit to this
amount will accrue and be subdivided among the dealers con-
cerned in the trade which gets the order. And the causing
this new order is as good for the parties who receive it, and for
the rest of the country in the aggregate, — as the giving an or-
der to the same amount, for that or any other thing, to the
same or any other parties in the country, for the personal con-
sumption of the purchaser.

Fifth Case; let the Sheffield manufacturer not only love
claret for his drink, but Perigord pies for his dinner, French
silks for his waistcoats, French gloves for his hands, and French
slippers for his feet, and if it be possible let him take an oath
and keep it, that he will consume nothing but what shall be of
French origin. And to this diabolical determination, let him
add the infernal ingenuity of resolving, that as an economy,
instead of bringing his claret and his Perigord pies to himself,
he will convey himself to the claret and the pies, and his razors
with him to pay with. And what difference will that make, —
except depriving some British dealers of the freight of the
claret and the pies to put it into the pocket of the economizing
gourmand, and giving to some others the price of his passage
in the steam- boat? In whichever of the ways herein before
supposed the payment for these French goods takes place, no
other important alteration would appear to arise out of the
simple transfer of the locality of the digester. And if he
should hire French valets in France in lieu of a portion of his
claret, no possible difference could be made thereby to the
people left at home.

Sixth Case; instead of going over to his French valets, let
the Sheffield-man stay at home, but declare that he will be
waited on by none but Frenchmen, and that he will have
a host of French valets brought over for this purpose, to
the exclusion of his own countrymen who are languishing to
have the honour of receiving his commands. And when these
Frenchmen come, let him pay them with his razors. It looks
very much as if this could make no difference : — as if it
amounted to the same thing in the end, as the Frenchmen
being paid with the razors abroad. If they keep any part of
them for their own shaving, the only difference is that there is
a Frenchman with a razor in his pocket on this side of the
Channel instead of the other ; if they sell any part of them for
the sake of buying other things, they diminish the orders on
razor-makers at large with the one hand, and increase the
orders on those trades with whom they spend the money with
the other. It appears therefore that the calling over and
paying the French valets, — though it is undeniably taking the

490 The Question of Absenteeism reducible

bread out of the mouths of the fraternity of British valets, —
is putting bread to the same amount into the mouths of some
other class or classes of British traders ; the truth being, that
precisely the same effects are produced in the aggregate, as if
the razors had been purchased for the foreign market, and sent
over and consumed in France, in return for any kind of French
produce to be consumed either here or there by the purchaser
of the razors.

Seventh Case; let the Sheffield-man be brought to a change
of mind, and declare that he will buy ale, and pay for it with
his razors. This case will be the same in its aggregate results,
us if he had sent his razors into the home market in the usual
way, and then bought ale with the money. For if the ale-dealers
keep any of the razors for their own use, it is the same thing
as if the razors had been sent into the home market by the
cutler, and the money got there for them given to the men of
ale to buy them out again. And if they sell any lor the sake
of buying other things, it is only their sending the razors into
the home market instead of the cutler, and spending the money
got for them in the same way as if they had got it from the
cutler. The truth therefore is, that in this case precisely the
same effects are produced in the aggregate, as if the razors
were sold in the home market by the cutler, and the money
laid out in ale.

Eighth Case; let the Sheffield-man once more change his
mind, and say " I won't have ale ; but I will consent to take
footmen from my countrymen, and send away the Frenchmen.*'
In this case there is only a substitution of the labour of footmen
and their dependencies, for that of ale-makers and their de-
pendencies. If the payment is made in money, then the
footmen &c. spend the money upon meat, drink, clothing, lodging
for themselves or wives and children, which they severally con-
sume, enjoy, and see the end of; and the persons concerned in
producing the ale, would have done the like with such portions
of the payment as might finally have fallen to their several
shares. Or if it is made in razors, then what they use and
what they sell may be accounted for as in the preceding Case.
If the footmen and their dependencies will consume all, the
ale-makers and their dependencies would consume all. There
seems no pretence for saying that there is anything about the
labour of the footmen which puts it in a different category from
the labour of the ale-makers, so long as the payer, the Sheffield-
man, is willing to accept one as equivalent to the other.

It appears then, that in respect of aggregate or national ad-
vantage, keeping and paying a British footman is the same thing
as ordering and consuming the produce of any other kind of

to the Principles of Free Trade.

491

British labour to the same amount ; and that bringing over and
paying a French valet in his place, is the same thing as order-
ing a quantity of British goods to the same amount, and sending
it to France to be exchanged for some kind of French produce
and consuming that ; and moreover, that in these two pairs
of equals, the last-mentioned in each are equal to one another.

And here comes in a paradox, which has been alluded to on
a former occasion *. " Give the money,'' it may be said, " to
the British valet instead of the French one ; and a countryman
will be comforted to the amount, and all British interests in
the aggregate remain as before." And the reason v^^hy,— be-
cause the British valet will expend the money upon somebody,
just as much as you will if you expend it on goods you chuse
to giv^e away to the French.

This is the same fallacy as if, in the celebrated instance where
the nobility of Europe left off keeping " tails" of followers and
took to wearing embroidery and jewellery instead, it should
have been urged, * Keep up your '* tails," and the tails" will
spend the money just as much as you will if you spend it on
the embroiderers and jewellers ; the benefit therefore to the

* Westminster Review for January 1829, Art. 15, on Absenteeism. See pages
53 and 54 of Vol. I of the present Vl'ork.
_ This part of the subject has been greatly cleared by subsequent agitation. The
simplest case in point, is that of supposing yourself to be advised to have
your firewood cut with a blunt axe instead of a sharp, in order that you may pay
two shillings weekly for two days' work of a woodcutter, instead of one shilling
for one. tjpon which it its clear, that the gain to the woodcutter is exactly
balanced by the loss to some other kind of trader, say a gardener, who used
to be paid to do a day's work weekly for the purpose of producing you
cabbages; so that, setting off these two against each other, the loss of a
shilling to you the consumer of the wood, remains a final and uncompensated
loss. And not only is the gain of the woodcutter equal to the loss of the gardener,
but all the consequences, to the greatest possible extent, are precisely and
glaringly equal. If the woodcutter expends the shilling for the benefit of other
trades, so would the gardener have expended it for the benefit of other trades.
They might even by possibility be the same trades, for it might be that the wood-
cutter and the gardener would have laid out the shilling, (whichever of them had
got it,) on the same baker or the same beer-seller ; but that they would be some
trades, and to the amount of a shilling, is as plain in one case as in the other. If
you the user of the wood (overlooking the fact that in one case you were to pay
the shilling and get no cabbages) were to debate the question with reference to
the woodcutter and gardener alone, the question would simply be. Shall I give a
shilling for the benefit of a woodcutter and the trades on which he will expend it,
or for the benefit of a gardener and the trades on which he will expend it ?

In this state of the argument, stands up an advocate for the monopoly of the
blunt axe, and tries to puzzle the case by exclaiming, ** O, but if you would have
expended the shilling on somebody as for instance a gardener, it is plain that the
woodcutter will expend it on somebody too, to the equal advantage of trade in
the aggregate." Which is refusing to set off the woodcutter's gain and its conse-
quences against that which is their visible counterpart viz. the gardener's loss
and its consequences, and insisting on setting them off against an expenditure
which, in tho language of mathematicians, is of a different order.

The same kind of refusal to set off a quantity against what is its visible coun-
terpart, and insisting on setting it off against what is not, is at the bottom of
what is in the text called the paradox. — Added in 1839.

492 The Question of Absenteeism reducible

rest of the country will be the same as ever, and the enjoyment
to the *' tails" will be clear gain.'

The answer to this would be, that the enjoyment to the
** tails" and their dependencies, is equal to the enjoyment to
the embroiderers &c. and their dependencies ; and because
these two parties will equally spend the money, the further
consequences will be equal in the aggregate. And because
this is true, it follows that the other is not.

No person has ever thought of denying the existence of the
balance in the instance of the transfer of the custom of the
nobility above described ; or of doubting, that with the excep-
tion of the temporary difficulties attendant on all transfers, the
effect was to raise up a population of embroiderers and jewellers,
instead of a population of turbulent tairs-men. And one reason
why nobody has doubted it, is that the contrary assertion would
cut equally either way. If the feudal followers might assert,
that they should spend the money as much as the embroiderers
&c., and therefore their enjoyment of the money would be clear
gain, — why might not the embroiderers &c. equally urge, that
they should spend the money just as much as the followers, and
therefore their enjoyment of the money would be clear gain ?
But an argument that will tell equally for either of the contend-
ing parties, is manifestly good for neither.

The paradox, however, may be urged further. Suppose .that
the feudal followers would buy embroidery^* Would not the
gain to the embroidering trade be the same as if the em-
broidery had been ordered by the nobles, or for foreign con-
sumption ; and consequently the enjoyment by the followers
clear gain ?

It may be replied, that the gain to embroiderers from the
followers buying embroidery, will only be the same as would be
the gain to comb-makers if they were to buy small-tooth combs.
And if they were to buy small-tooth combs, there seems no
pretence for saying, that the gain to the followers would not be
balanced by a loss to the embroiderers or to somebody else.
Whence, if the gains whether to embroiderers or to comb-
makers would be equal, it may be gathered that the gain to the
followers would be balanced by a loss to the embroiderers or
somebody else, in the case where they should chuse to spend
their money on embroidery.

The defenders of the paradox will answer, that the value of
the gain or loss to embroiderers is made of two different mag-
nitudes ; — that at one time it is made equal to all the enjoy-

• This aorain, is only an effort to embarrass the question by petting up a con-
fusion between expenditures of dij/erent orders. — Added in 1839.

to the Principles of Free Trade,

493

ment that arises from giving the money to the followers, the
followers included, — and at another time not equal.

This is true. Where there is the semblance of two contra-
dictory sets of truths, there must be a step wanting to make
them coincide. The step that would effect coincidence here,
would be establishing that the gain or loss to the dealers of all
kinds existing in the country, from the expenditure or non-
expenditure of a given sum of money, is less after the sum in
question has been given to the followers, than it would have
been if the same money had been expended by the nobles or
for foreign consumption. And the way in which such an effect
can be produced, can apparently be only through the fact that
employing the followers takes part of the transferable labour
out of the labour market, — makes labour to everybody some-
what scarcer and dearer,— and that the result is a loss divided
among all the purchasers of labour in the country, which makes
up for the difference in dispute.

This has perhaps driven the question into a smaller compass ,
by removing the difficulty that attached to the portion that
should be supposed expended by the successful rival upon the
other. Labour, in fact, is a commodity in the market like any-
thing else ; and the same reasoning that applies to the portion
of his receipts which a feudal follower might expend upon em-
broidery, may be applied to what the ale-dealer might expend
upon razors.

If it should be represented that the feudal followers are in
great want and distress, — and, for argument's sake, that they
are obliged to be maintained by the rest of the community by
the means of poor-rates ; — this can alter nothing in the aggre-
gate, if the industrious people who are to be cut off from the
market for their embroidery or their razors are equally dis-
tressed, and parts and portions of ihem equally subjected to the
necessity of being maintained by poor-rates.

Two errors may be noted, or suspected, as attaching to the
opponent's side. One is, the statement of the Quarterly Re-
viewers, that when commodities are sent out of a country '* to
pay absentee landlords, that country receives no return, except
receipts for rent can be represented in that light*." Now the
simple fact is, that these commodities have been paid for once
already, and there is no justice in demanding that they shall
be paid for any more. If a man in London had a pot of porter
at his mouth, which was his own and he had paid for, it would
be very hard to say to him, " Wretch, are you going to be so

Quarterly Review, No. LXVI. Article on Irish Absentees, p. 460.

494 The Question of Absenteeism reducible

unpatriotic as to drink all that yourself ? Remember your
country, and see that a proper return is made to her before
you drink a drop." The man would naturally reply, I have
done so, Sir ; I have paid for it, your Worship ; I have given
hard work for it to somebody, your Honour ; or if I did not, my
father did before me. He raised a Uttle estate, he did. Sir : and
I bought this very porter out of the income." Heaven help the
Tory, who should thus attempt to stop an Englishman's porter
in its course. And suppose the Englishman bottles up the
contents of his pot, and sends it off to Calais to be exchanged
for a bottle of vin ordinaire with some porter-loving French-
man ; — or whips himself into the steam-boat for Calais with
the porter in his pocket, and consoles himself with drinking it
on his arrival ; — or makes the exchange there ioxvin ordinaire^
and gives himself the gripes at Calais instead of Dover ; — in
any of these cases, where does there arise the smallest plea for
saying the man has done an unpatriotic act in the disposition
of his porter? Where is there a gain to any living creature
taken away, that would have been made if the man had swilled
his porter at home; and where the pretext for saying, that the
porter has been taken out of the country to the destruction of
some due return ? The whole is manifestly a mistake, a double
charge. The return due to the beloved country for the porter,
was made when the porter was bought and paid for ; and no
power on earth can show any injury from its progress after-
wards. The objection of the 'Quarterly Reviewers seems to be
completely answered. The paradox, is not theirs.

Another error which may be suspected, is that there is some
connexion with a want of thorough comprehension of the way
in which what Adam Smith calls " effectual demand" creates
supply ; — a mistake of the same kind, as that of the mob that
stops a brig loaded with potatoes for the metropolis, in the ex-
pectation that this is to make potatoes cheap for ever and ever
in their own market. There is a confusion between a mo-
mentary gain, and an enduring and recurring one. The
appropriation of the potatoes may benefit the potatoe-eaters in
the parish for the next fortnight ; but nature will find out the
way, to put a stop to their expected perpetuity of gormandizing
at other people's loss. In like manner the stoppage of the
transit of an absentee's goods or money, and forcing him to
expend in a particular market and come here to consume the
produce, might do a brief benefit to certain parties in the parish,
in the same way as in the stoppage of the potatoes; but' it
remains to be seen whether nature will not have her ways and
means, to avenge herself on the stupid tyranny, and disappoint
the mob of their expected gains.

to the Principles of Free Trade.

495

If all this be true, it assuredly leads to some startling results.
It goes to prove, that if a nation employs foreigners to do its
work,— as the Portuguese employ Gallegos,— it is the same
thing to Portugal in the end. It goes to prove, that if the Irish
aristocracy should take into their heads to expend their reve-
nues in paying foreign regiments either at home or abroad, to
the exclusion of all employment in that way to native Irish, the
last state of Ireland would be in the aggregate the same as the
first. There is no desire to disguise the length to which
the principle would go ; the only object is to know if it is
true*.

If it be substantially correct, then the immediate consequence
is, that the result of any tax on Absentees, as on foreign con-
sumption in general, would be the inflicting a pure grievance
on the sufferers, to the extent of what they might pay or give
up to avoid paying ; without the shadow of aggregate advan-
tage to their countrymen in return. And that consequently
such an effort of legislation would be a simple ebullition of ill-
humour, a mere employment of the faculty of voting in the
House of Commons to plague a neighbour, a naked exertion
of the arbitrary power of saying to a fellow-citizen, " I don't
like people to drink claret. Drink none.'*

The general inference from all the above is, that whatever
perplexity may be found in some of the details, it v>^ill finally be
discovered that Heaven has set its canon that nothing shall
be lost to a community in the aggregate, by using foreign
produce instead of its own, — and for the reason which he that
runs may read, that it can never have foreign produce but in
barter for something of its own. It is part and portion of the
arrangement of Providence, for promoting peace on earth and
good will towards men, as fast as the race of political blunder-
ers who have kept nations at daggers-drawing on false pretences,
can be driven off the scene.

These considerations are turned over to the speculation of
such as feel aggrieved and threatened by the hubbub kept up
on the subject of Absenteeism ; with a view to engaging their
attention and support to the general principles of Free Trade,
of which their particular concernment appears to be an offset.

* Neither landowners nor traders of any kind, were ever heard protesting as
such, against the employment of the German Legion either at home or abroad,
in lieu of the same number of English clodhoppers who might by possibility
have been enlisted instead. On the contrary, it is probable they had always a
more or less distinct vision of the fact, that in one way or other they had the
custom of the Germans and of the clodhoppers too.

This is not given as being decisive j but only as showing that there may be
results and tendencies which do not trirust themselves upon the earliest view. —
Added in 1839.

496

Notes ^c.

PARAGRAPHS
to he added in the Article on the '* Enharmonic of the Ancients,'* to the Note*

beginning " A late Mathematical Professor," in page 120 ofth& present Volume.

In some modern Instruction-books of name (J. B. Cramer's for the Pianoforte')
a return is made to wliat is understood to have been the practice of the early
moderns, but subsequently given up,— the introduction of the Major Sixth as
well as Seventh, in the ascending scale in the Minor series.

If a scale was to be considered as a tune, or something which was to produce a
musical effect by itself, it might be discretionary whether the Major Sixth should
be intro(fuced or not. But instead of this, a scale is a collection of the notes
usually presenting themselves in a certain key or series, intended to familiarize
the learner with their execution. Now, in airs or tunes in the Minor series, it is
practically found that there is a constant or very frequent occurrence of the
Major Seventh in the ascending scale ; in fact the notes are hardly ever found
ascending without it. But there is not the same occurrence of the Major Sixth ;
and in fact a Major Sixth can hardly be found oftener than any other note may
be capriciously or accidentally affected by a Sharp.

The inference from this would appear to be, that the musical authorities were
in the right, who abandoned the introduction of the Major Sixth into the ascend-
ing scale in the Minor series as taught to learners ; and that the return
to the older custom, is not only a useless complication and difficulty to the
performer, but errs in inculcating the habit of what is not to be executed in
general practice, instead of the habit of what is. — Jdded in 1839.

NOTE

to he added to the second 'paragraph of the Article on Gardiner' s^ Music of
Nature** in page 282 of the present Volume.

*The experiments detailed in the following extracts, throw light on. the for-
mation of musical as distinguished from unmusical sounds.

* M. Savart had a wheel made about nine inches in diameter, with three hundred
and sixty teeth set at equal distances round its rim ; so that while revolving, each
tooth successively struck against a card. When the wheel's motion was so slow
as for a less number than sixteen teeth to strike the card in a second, each stroke
was distinctly heard as a separate noise. But when the velocity of the wheel's
motion was increased to allow of sixteen strokes in a second, then, in place of
hearing sixteen separate noises, a continued sound was heard which entirely
differed from the noises composing it.*

' When Mr, Savart's wheel revolved at the rate that fifteen impulses (of the
teeth against the card) occurred in a second, he heard fifteen separate noises ;
but when he increased the rate of revolution, so as to allow of sixteen impulses
in a second, a continuous sound was produced. Now, so long as the wheel con-
tinued to revolve at the same rate, the resulting sound continued of an uniform
pitch. He found on increasing the rate of revolution (which consequently pro-
duced a greater number of impulses in a second), that the resulting sound was
of a higher pilch. When the rapidity arrived at the rate of thirty-two impulses
in a second, the resulting sound was an octave higher than that at sixteen. It
required a rate of sixty-four in a second to reach another octave. And it was in-
variably found, that, when the rate of revolution was changed, the resulting
sound was of a different pitch ; thus a decrease ^of the velocity lowered the
pitch of the sound, and an increase of the velocity raised the pitch of the sound.' —
Phrenological Journal for 1 Juli/, 1839. p. 249.

END OF VOL. II.

Loadou: Printed by VV. Clowjes and Sons, Duke-street.