try is comparatively feeble and unfrequent; and the arts of putting and accumulating the dead capital deposited for purposes of interchange in the very hands which most easily supply it in turn to every one, are not yet acquired. In order to circulate a million for a year, the French will employ a thousand, where the English would employ but a hundred. The smaller the relative currency of a nation, the better are its money matters managed. Thus the three wooden pillars of our author's system are each of them rotten at the core; and the whole superstructure, not a very consequential one, creaks and totters and leans to subsidence. The third chapter treats of the course of exchange: it contains several tables arithmetically accurate, and several facts, not familiar perhaps in the literary world, and therefore of value to speculative readers; but the reasoning is diffuse, indefinite and driftless. The fourth chapter treats of the fluctuation of the market price of above and below its mint money price. The observation is just that the over..utterance of paper is a cause of excess in the market price of money. This author recommends a new coinage: the principle which he suggests of is suing eighteen-penny shillings is surely inconvenient: it would be better to make tenpenny shillings, which would greatly facilitate the addition of the denary column in house-keeping, bills.. The fifth chapter examines Lord Liverpool's letter to the king, which was reviewed by us p. 278 of our fourth volume, and which it is needless to comment afresh. The sixth chapter appreciates the amount of our specie, which is here valued at five millions sterling. In our opinion this is the best chapter in the book: the guesses which it contains approach far nearer to probability, than the computations usually circulated. The seventh chapter treats of the balance of trade: it begins by needless recapitulations of the past chapters, and concludes with an assertion, no way following from the premises, that the theory of the balance of trade, which supposes that a nation grows rich by accumulation, is wholly without foundation. The eighth chapter treats of the payment of our foreign expenditure. It details various intercourses between Mr. Pitt and the bank directors. Provided trade is free between us and a given country; no subsidy can be very ruinous to us. By our remitting thither the subsidy, Petersburg, or Stockholm, acquires an unusual quantity of bills on London. Of course, such bills sell lower on the exchange there: and it immediately becomes the interest of the Russian or Swedish merchant to make his purchases of all kinds in London where now make his payments he can cheapest. Thus subsidies are always taken out in produce, even if remitted in cash; and always leave to the subsidizing country the regular mercantile profits of the increased return. The new lines of trade opened in these circumstances often continue open, after the subsidy which occasioned them has ceased. On the theory of exchange we have already expatiated, Vol. I. p. 387 and 388: and may recommend to this author our ob servations; they may possibly clear up his ideas. The ninth chapter treats of the import of corn. The tenth analyzes Lord King's hypothesis. The eleventh chapter treats of the causes of the depreciation of money. This depreciation is a misfortune to the capitalist and to the idle man: but the landholder increases his rent, and the industrious man his earnings, in proportion to the depreciation. One great cause of the depreciation is the continual progress of taxation: a second, the monopoly of the domestic corn market, tyrannously arrogated by our land owners: a third, the over-utterance of paper money, to which cause exclusively our author's attention is bent. The twelfth chapter enquires further into the effects of this depreciation and recommends increasing the provision for the royal family in the proportion of 2191. for each 1001. of income, which the civil list, the heir apparent, or the royal dukes, enjoyed previous to 1750. The last fifty years of the last century produced in our author's opinion that amount of depreciation. The thirteenth chapter treats on the reformation of the paper currency of Europe. Our author's first proposal is (p. 331) that the utterance of paper should in all countries be forbidden beyond the existing amount. This is to be accomplished (1) by depriving a certain proportion of the extant banks of the privilege of uttering paper; and (2) by restricting the tolerated banks from publishing any note below a given value, or beyond a given amount. It is pretended that these ends could easily be brought about, by the ubiquitary substitution of solitary chartered banks, accountable at the bank of England, to the clusters of private banks already extant. Thus that monopoly of the bankingtrade, which the bank of England already enjoys in London, would be rendered co-extensive with the British Empire. All provincial banks would be mere branch-banks of the bank of England; and all private bank notes would be prohibited, in favour of the privileged metropolitan bank-paper. This enormous project, if realized, would utterly confiscate the means of maintenance of all those provincial bankers, whose estab lishments were found superfluous in the general incorporation of banks. It would render the whole commercial world dependent on the caprice of a London directory for the requisite advances of capí tal, which would then always be proportioned not to the demand from without, but to the superfluous hoard within. Open banking supplies capital in proportion to the demand of the customer; and shut, or monopolous, banking, in proportion to the wealth of the lender. The one facilitates the. obtainal of capital, when it is profitable for the state or the community that it should be forth-coming; the other facilitates the employment of capital, when general regurgitation shows that profit is on the decline. We believe that this project of annihilating all private banking in favour of the bank of England, is not a barren speculation, which its impudent rapacity will suffice to counteract; but that it is a plan seriously entertained and pursued by powerful chieftains of the monied interest; and that this book, therefore, and therefore only, an important one, is put forwards to try the pulse of ministers and of the public, about applying to the legislature for a more extensive and exclusive bank-charter. We deprecate the grant of such a charter. It would be better for the citizens of London to cashier than to extend the privileges of their bank. A system of open banking would increase the competition of lenders, and facilitate the supply of capital. of capital. It would intercept that political intolerance, which discounts in preference for ministerial traders. It would vary and multiply the bondsmen for our circu lating paper money; and by embarking on various, though on smaller bottoms, the security of bankers' notes, it would prevent those panics and alarms, which, if they were to affect bank of England paper, would put an end to the government itself. But on a system of open banking, if one banker gives way, others remain standing; their notes pass current; and a circulat ing medium, sufficient for public purposes, is sure always to maintain its credit. There is in the monied interest a body spirit analogous to that of theologic parties. One set of men wish to make the bank of England into a cathedral, and the provincial banking shops into so many parishchurches, compelled by law to evulgate the same orthodox paper. The circulation of any notes dissentient in value from those devised by the Directory, or subscribed with another firm, or issued ART. XCIX. Political Index. THIS work has already passed through three editions, and has a regular sale, not merely in the literary, but in the practical world; who consult it both as a map of the forms of political advancement, and as a chronicle containing agreeable illustrations of any situation that happens to be attained. at a time, or in a quantity not de- By ROBERT BEATSON. 3 vols. 8vo. The first volume treats of the different degrees of nobility, of the order of precedency between them, of the privileges of the peers of Great Britain; and proceeds to give a list of the different administrations, from the accession of Henry VIII. to the present time. This list is grievously imperfect. For instance: the regents named in the will of Henry VIII. to govern the kingdom, during the minority of his son, are here not specified. Under queen Mary, bishop Gardiner is alone named as minister of state. The interval between 1640 and interesting is a single original playbill of Shakspear's era, which supplies the names of the performers of principal characters, in but a single one of his immortal dramas? How infinitely more attaching and instructive must it be, to read over the names of those nobler actors in the political drama of real life, who have worn the ermine or the lawn-sleeves of their country, and been decked with the pink ribbands and silk gowns of the constitution. Mightier than the enchanted mirror which the witches presented to Macbeth, this work evokes, in long hereditary processional succession, not merely the shades of the crowned heads, but those also of the deputy earl-marshals, and under secretaries of the state. The second volume treats with similar learning, detail, accuracy, and comprehension, of the naval, military, and law departments. The third volume is an index to the officers attached to the governments of Scotland and of Ireland. The minuter the grains of which a compilation consists, the greater is the merit of a multifarious assemblage, and of a large accumulation. These merits Dr. Beatson has remarkably attained, and will no doubt, at every fresh edition of his work, be able to approximate still nearer to correctness and completion. We exhort those, whose ancestors or kinsmen are here analyzed, to communicate any little emendation, which family records may enable them to supply. The emmets of antiquarianism are well employed in smoothing the path of history, and strowing the precincts of the temple of fame. CHAPTER IV. CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND TRANSLATIONS. THE work of chief importance in classical literature which we are in the present volume called to announce, is Mr. Kidd's useful republication of various tracts of the celebrated Ruhnkenius, which could not be procured without difficulty or expence on account of their scarcity, or their insertion in large works of high price. We may howevery take this opportunity of mentioning that the Oxford Strabo, with which the Clarendon press has long laboured, has at length made its appearance, but at a period too late to permit any further notice. ART. I. Opuscula Ruhnkeniana, quæ aut seorsum e prelo emissa jam fere evanuerant, aut voluminibus impenso pretio venalibus adjecta juvenes antique venustatis amantes plerumque latuerant, in lucem et utilitatem communem iterum vindicata. Accedunt epistola novem ad J. P. D'Orvillium_nunc primum in conspectum eruditorum prolata. Præfationem et indices addidit THOMAS KIDD, A. M. E Coll. S. S. Trin. Cantabrigiæ. 8vo.. THE name of Ruhnkenius has justly obtained a high rank among those of the eminent scholars, who almost from the period of its first establishment, have conferred distinguished honour on the university of Leyden. The circumstances of his life are well known, having been related in an interesting, though somewhat diffuse manner, by his friend, and successor to his public station, David Wyttenbach. His character as a critic has long been established in Europe by his labours on Hesychius, his publication of Timæus, his critical epistles, and various editions of ancient authors. The object of the work, which it is now our office to announce, was, as described in the title, to collect and present in an accessible form some interesting minor tracts of this great critic, which having been printed separately were scarcely to be found, or being embodied in large and expensive works, were not easily to be procured by the student. The tracts are about twenty in number, of which we shall give some account, after having duly noticed the preface of the editor. Mr. Kidd commences his preface by a rapid sketch of the progress of criticism since the revival of letters, and strongly attests his own attachment to the art, by the animated terms in which he describes the merits of its celebrated professors. When he thinks on such men as Bentley, Hemsterhusius, Valckenaer, Pierson, Koen, Tyrwhitt, &c. he can scarcely refrain from imagining himself transported to the Elysian fields, "lumine purpureo vestitos, and standing in the presence of these heroes of better times, ready to exclaim, "sit anima mea vobiscum." |