after generations bear the weight | of the errors of the present; and thus a thousand times over, to increase the fatal importance of these errors, by the vast resources which this unlimited credit placed in the hands of the political cabinet. Let my reader take the trouble of combining in fancy the effect of these incalculable resources, with the pride of a nation which, provided she be flattered about her naval glory, her maritime rights, can be lead on to every possible absurdity and extravagance. producing or manufacturing of every article. This necessity has, if we may be allowed the expression, perfected the art of production, and has led to the discovery of more expeditious, simple and consequently economical means of obtaining any end whatever. As manufactures upon a large scale are generally the least expensive, the most trifling things are now attempted upon that scale. I have seen at Glasgow, dairies consisting of not less than three hundred cows, where they retailed milk as low as two-penceworth. The education of the poor which constitutes, perhaps, the only security of the rich, was impeded by the high price of books and tuition; and in the course of a few years there would have been no more personal safety in the midst of one of the most civilised nations of Europe, than among the Esquimaux or the Caffres. There is, no doubt, much information in Great Britain. But what is the use of information, what matters a knowledge of the true nature, and true situation of things, when once the passions are roused? Do we not see every day gamblers risking their money upon chances which calculation demonstrates to them to be unfavourable? We must at last pay, and pay with All at once schools are estausury too, for all the extrava-blished in which the preceptor gancies we indulge in, and the alone teaches with success and nearer we approach the term when rapidity, reading, writing, and we must necessarily calculate, the figures, to five hundred children less we are at liberty to commit at the same time, without the asnew errors with impunity. Politi-sistance of either pens or books. cal economy is no longer a science of speculation, and confined to a few: ignorance of it is excusable in no man who administers the finances of a nation, and I venture to assert that every government which shall either mistake or disregard the principles of political economy, is destined to receive its death blow from the administration of its finances. But it is principally the employment of machinery in the arts which has rendered the production of wealth more economical. There is scarcely a large landed estate in England, where the threshing machine, for instance, is not employed, by means of which, upon a large scale, you do more work in one day, than in one month by the ordinary method. But the labour of man, which is But let us return to our subject: Some good effects, among a great many bad ones, have how-rendered so expensive by the ever resulted, in England, from the necessity of economising all the expenses requisite for the dearness of all articles of first necessity, has been in no case supplied as advantageously as by the steam engine. There is no object of labour to which they have not been applied. They are used for spinning yarn, for weaving wool and cotton, for brewing beer, and for cutting crystal. I seen some = employed to embroider muslin, some to make butter. At New Castle, at Leeds, ambulatory steam engines propel waggons laden with coals, and nothing is more surprising at first for the traveller than to meet, in the country, a long string of those waggons advancing by themselves, without the assistance of any living being. | tion instead of enjoying her admirable industry and the unremitted activity of her labourers, is obliged to pay high for what she produces cheap. It being made impossible for her to sell as cheap as other nations less bent under the burthen of public taxes, she has no means of entering the markets abroad on the same terms as other foreigners. Thus she is cut off from a foreign market. For, if the government can compel the nation to buy things beyond their value, it does not, thank God, exercise the same power over the French, the Germans, and the Russians. May it not be, moreover, that the long estrangement of the British from the classic grounds of Europe has by degrees altered their taste in the fine arts-that their vases, their furniture, their candelabras exhibit neither correctness, lightness, nor elegance in their forms; Every where steam engines are prodigiously multiplied. There were but three or four in London thirty years ago. There are now thousands. They are to be found by hundreds in the large manufacturing cities; they are even to be seen on the farms, and the labour of industry can no longer be carried on with advantage but by means of their powerful co-opera--that they have relapsed into the tion. But they require a vast quantity of coals, of that combustible fossil which nature seems to have held in reserve to supply the exhaustion of the forests-an unavoidable result of civilisation. Accordingly, we might by means of a mineralogical map alone trace a map of the industry of Great Britain. Wherever coal is to be had, there industry prevails. But it is in vain that the modes of production are simplified. The taxes, the terrible taxes increase every day their voracious demand. They devour; and what they do not devour, they make almost unattainable. Not unlike the night mare which gains upon you notwithstanding all the efforts you make to escape from its pursuit, the taxes overtake, they outstrip the economy of the industrious producer; and the na VOL. I. Gothic and distorted style? Witness those heavy and complicated ornaments which mean nothing. The figuring of their stuffs, the choice of their colours would make them seem far behind the rest of Europe, and needing a long and active communication with the continent, to overtake us in these respects. Are we then to wonder at the disrepute in which British goods are held in the great markets of Europe? and can we predict for them better success in future until there shall be an alteration in their economic system. This critical position, which I have endeavoured to exhibit, and the causes of which I have tried to investigate, is the subject of animated debates not only in both houses of parliament but among the whole nation, and gives con P siderable weight to the attacks of the opposition not so redoubtable by its numbers, as for the solidity of its reasoning, and the celebrated names, the large fortunes, and the distinguished talents by which it is supported. The question respecting corn, and that respecting paper money, are chiefly agitated. The government has lately enacted laws upon these two subjects: but laws cannot remedy difficulties springing from the nature of things, and embarrassments of greater perplexity will still be felt. To form a clear idea on these subjects some explanations be come necessary. We have seen at the beginning of this pamphlet what circumstances, by favouring the activity of the commerce and of the manu factures of Great Britain, have raised there, the price of corn. The contributions of the cultivator of the soil, the rent paid by the farmer to the proprietor, rose in the same proportion; and now those who attend to agriculture maintain that, in order that the price of corn may reimburse the cultivator for his advances it must must keep up to between ninetyfive and one hundred shillings the quarter, and that, accordingly, it is proper to prohibit the importation of corn from the moment it falls below such price. They add that if the legislature does not adhere to this principle, it will be impossible for the farmers to pay the proprietors their rents, or the state its taxes; that the cultivation of corn being attended with loss, the cultivation of land of an inferior quality will be entirely given up, and the good land will be devoted to some more profitable crop than corn; that, thus, corn will grow more scarce, that a greater increase in the price will necessarily take place, and that the British nation will be more and more at the mercy of foreigners for its subsistence. On the other hand, the manufacturers and the merchants maintain, that if the articles of first necessity continue at the present extravagant prices, the price of labour must increase instead of being diminished, and that thus their goods must be offered every day with additional disadvantage, in foreign markets. The alternative is terrible. If the price of corn be not kept up, agriculture and the proprietors of land must be ruined; or if it is, commerce and manufactures are to perish. The British parliament by fixing at eighty shillings the price below which corn shall not be imported into Great Britain, have taken a mezzo termine which will satisfy nobody. But I will suppose that without displeasing the cultivators, parliament had found the means of reducing the price of corn to sixty-five shillings; still this would not extricate the nation from her embarrassments. In the British islands corn is but an item in the food of the labouring class, Potatoes, meat and fish form another considerable part. It is ascertained that each person upon an average does not use more than a quarter of wheat per annum, so that the quarter of wheat, if reduced to fifteen shillings less than the present price, would afford to the labouring men no more than a saving of about a cent per day. This reduction would scarcely be felt with respect to the price of labour, which is itself but a part of the expenses attending the producing or manufacturing of any article. Fifteen shillings more or less on the price of corn would have then but a feeble influence on the price of the articles of British production and on their sale in foreign markets. It is not the price of a single =article, no, not even the price of corn itself, which has a great effect on the price of the things produced or manufactured in a country. It is the price of every thing, and the price of every thing is = increased in the same ratio with the public burthens, which, under a thousand forms, reach the consumer, and affect all his expenses. It is the direct taxes, it is the prejudices and the manners of a country that impose upon the people obligations and burthens which it is not more easy to decline, than it is the payment of the - taxes. The matter of bank bills, theoretically more difficult, offers, however, fewer inconveniences in practice. In order to understand it well we must be acquainted with the basis of the present monied system of Great Britain, which is somewhat curious. The bank of England is a special company of capitalists which discounts bills of exchange, and, for a remuneration, assumes several public services, such as the payment of the interest of the public debt. The bank has loaned at different times to the government, a sum not only equal to the amount of the capital of the stockholders, but other sums in notes issued for that purpose, and which rest on no other security than the funds received in exchange from the government. These funds bear an interest, but the principal is not demandable, and of course they cannot be used for the discharge of the notes which have been issued upon their credit. The bank of England, less prudent in that respect than the bank of France, has obtained, on these terms, the renewal of its charter. The bank of France has lent to the government the sum which the government, by an abuse of its power, compelled it to lend out of its capital. Its capital was the property of its stockholders, who were at liberty to dispose of it as they pleased. But they did not coin notes (representing no sort of capital) to lend them to the government. Now, what has been the consequence of the operations of the bank of England? The notes lent by the bank to the government, and given by the government to its creditors, were sooner or later presented for payment to the bank. But this institution having received no real value as a security for these notes at the time of their being issued, could not reimburse them. Then it became necessary, either that the government should pay the bank, to enable the latter to take back its notes, or that it should authorise the bank not to pay them. This last expedient was resorted to in 1797. The suspension of payments in specie by the bank, authorised at that time, has been since several times, and but recently revived. The bank notes have thereby acquired the character of a truly national coin. Individuals could not be compelled to do what the bank could not be compelled to do. From that time commercial transactions have been settled in nothing else but bank notes, and now when we buy a bill of exchange payable in England, we know before hand that it is to be paid in the same way. There resulted from this what most uniformly result from similar measures. The currency either in bank notes or in specie having that there does not remain to perform the office of money a single piece of national coin, not one minted by the government, the only money in use consists of the notes of an individual company, thereby become more considerable in comparison with the other articles of value in circulation, and being no longer susceptible of being reduced by the reimbursement of the notes, was of course depreciated; lost its value compara-known by the name of the bank of tively with the value of every thing else, and therefore in comparison with bullion. From this moment gold coin, which circulated concurrently with bank notes, participating in the general depreciation of the currency of the country, gained an additional value by being converted into bars, and guineas disappeared.* The directors of the bank have increased this depreciation by never refusing to discount bills of exchange endorsed by wealthy commercial houses; an operation which extended the speculations of some individuals beyond their real capital, by means of a fictitious one (the bank notes) the real and venal value of which decreased in proportion to their nominal augmentation. Now that gold and silver have disappeared from circulation from the causes above explained, and The word depreciation does not mean discredit, but only diminution of value. Paper money, as well as sugar or any other commodity, increases or diminishes according to the quantity at market for sale, and the quantity demanded by the wants of the community, independently of the opinion which may be entertained of the probability or improbability of its final reimbursement in specie. Metallic currency itself varies in its value compared with the value of other things; but its variation is not a's sudden because such large quantities of it cannot at once be put in circulation. It is proved that metallic currency itself was depreciated in England, although it is out of the question that people should cease having confidence in gold currency. England, which notes contain the promise which is never performed, of paying pounds sterling in specie of the quality and weight determined by law. There are no bank notes below the sum of one pound sterling. Still as people are in need of small change for every day transactions, and a dread is entertained that if the government should issue legal coin of a small value in specie, it would soon be melted, and converted into ingots,-the bank has been authorised to circulate a small change in silver pieces called tokens, which are nothing else but medals containing not more fourths of the quantity of metal which ought to be contained in legal coin of the same denomina. tion. No profit could result from melting them, but in the event of bank notes falling below the three fourths of their nominal value; for then with a value less than the three fourths of a pound sterling in specie, one might procure bullion which would be worth these three fourths. than the three In this state of things the mint of London, the only mint in England, would have nothing at all to do if it were not engaged in coining for a stated price, on account of the bank of England, the metallic tokens for small change, of which we have just been speaking. There are in every county and indeed in every city, provincial banks, which put in circulation notes and metallic subdivisions of |