C'est là le cas du commerce en commission. Le commissionnaire vend, achete, fait tout en son nom, et comme s'il agissoit pour lui-même.

'Lorsque quelqu'un veut traiter avec un autre, au nom d'un commettant, il est naturel, qui celui-ci, pour lequel on s'annonce, en a véritablement donné la commission. On nomme indifféremment commission, procuration, mandat, plein pouvoir, la marque par laquelle il conste qu'une commission, a été donnée à tel ou tel; et l'on désigne également par ces mots la commission ou la charge elle-même: mais ces mots désignent plus ordinairement une pièce écrite appellée acte: ces différentes dénominations tirent leur origine des différens objets auxquels la commission se rapporte. Cet acte exprime l'objet de la commission, la personne qui la donne, et celle qui en est chargée.

Mais souvent, et en général dans le commerce, on n'exige pas cette preuve, parcequ'on se fie à la bonne foi de celui qui s'annonce comme ayant commission.

Il n'est pas extraordinaire, qu'en donnant commission, on charge le commissionnaire de quelques ordres, qui limitent ou étendent la faculté de l'exécuter de telle ou de telle manière; et que le commettant ne juge pas à propos de faire connoître à celui avec lequel son commissionnaire a ordre de traiter, la raison pour laquelle ces ordres ne sont pas exprimés dans le plein pouvoir. On nomme cela une commission sécrète. Observez, et il est essentiel de le faire, que lorsque quelqu'un agit pour vous en votre nom, il agit comme vous réprésentant; mais qu'il ne le fait pas, lorsqu'il agit pour vous en son propre nom.' Vol. ii. P. 220-222.

Une société peut être formée de façon que chacun y participe au gain et à la perte suivant le capital qu'il y a fourni, et que celui qui y apporte d'ailleurs son travail jouisse encore de quelque bénéfice extraordinaire.

"La même chose peut avoir lieu dans une société à laquelle quelques-uns n'apportent que du travail, sous condition, de ne pas participer à la perte, de participer au profit pour une certaine partie, et de jouir d'un bénéfice extraordinaire.

'On connoit dans le commerce une société que l'on nomme en commandite. Dans ces sociétés il n'y a qu'un des associés qui paroit et qui gére. Suivant le droit de la France celui-là est le seul, qui soit solidairement obligé pour les pretensions sur la société ; les autres ne le sont, que jusqu'à la concurrence de leur part; c'est-a-dire jusqu'à la concurrence du capital qu'ils ont mis en société.

M. Cela me paroit très naturel. Car en mettant une certaine somme, il paroit, que je veux bien risquer de la perdre, mais non pas au-delà. En considérant une société comme une

personne morale, qui fait son commerce par un certain capital mis en cominun par des associés, il semble, que ceux qui contractent avec elle doivent être considerés comme traitant avec elle sur ce pied, et lui donner crédit suivant son état: que par conséquent ils ne peuvent répéter des associés en particulier ce qu'ils ont à prétendre de la société, et qu'ils doivent se contenter de ce qu'elle possède et en cas d'insolvabilité de ce que la société possède.

N'ayant point contracté avec un associé en son particulier, mais comme réprésentant de la société, il ne s'est pas non plus engagé envers moi en son particulier, et par consequent je n'ai pu acquérir aucun droit sur lui en son particulier.

'L. Votre raisonnement, Maurice, est trés-juste: dans ce cas il n'y a point d'obligation que celle qui resulte de la relation dans laquelle on vient de contracter.' Vol. iii. p. 128-129.

Our readers must be relieved from business, while we recur to more general observations. The objection, which our memory now recalls, was made by an English translator to the original pages of the learned baron Puffendorf: "they were not only loaded with numerous citations at large, but with disorderly marks of addition, reference, comparison, and the like; as if the confusion of a swelling margin had run over and discharged itself upon the text."

No similar blame can be attached to the volumes of Dr. Luzac: their margins are completely divested of notes, citations of authorities, and every disorderly mark: even an index is omitted. Celebrated writers on politics, commerce, and jurisprudence, have been, however, sedulously consulted, and have afforded ample contributions. The systems and opinions of Grotius, Puffendorf, Heinicolus, Leibnitz, Wolff, and Bynkerslock, have not been neglected. Although cursorily examined and often opposed, their valuable writings are usually treated with candour and respect; while J. J. Rousseau and Voltaire are loaded with this excess of moral indignation :

Ces deux génies ont pestiféré le genre humain, rélative

mont à ses sentimens moraux.

Leur plume a fait ce qui fit à Athénes la langue de Démosthène: elle a ensorcelé la plus grande partie de la multitude.'Violà la source des abominations qui se commettent en plusieurs pays, des dérèglemens affreux, des débauches exécrables, des obscénités dégoutantes, auxquelles on s'abandonne, &c.' Vol. i.

P. 189-190.

The principles of Dr. Luzac are certainly pure; and in this compilation he has collected abundant moral, political, and commercial facts and reasonings. His style, plain and unattractive, we acknowledge proves that he is no sorcerer. Wri

ters who conscientiously endeavour to promote public instruc tion, may, perhaps, justly appeal, as an apology for tediousness and inelegance, to the salutary and classical maxim:

'Cavendum est, ne fugiant ex animo que dicenda sunt, dum attenditur, ut arte dicatur.'

ART. VII.-Traité d'Economie Politique; ou simple Exposition de la Manière dont se forment, se distribuent, et se consomment les Richesses. Par Jean-Baptiste Say. Paris. 1803.

Treatise on Political Economy; or a simple Explanation of the Manner in which Wealth is acquired, distributed, and amassed. 2 Vols. Svo. Imported by De Boffe.

POLITICAL economy is scarcely a correct expression: city house-law, which is a fair translation, borders on verbal contradiction, the one epithet extending what the other limits: public bouse-keeping, an analogous combination, is hardly intelligible, unless when the two first words are compounded by a hyphen, and then it has a technical and wholly different meaning. Sir James Steuart seems to have felt the incongruity of this phrase, and in his title-page offers the substitution of domestic policy. The French writers, however, are fond of treating on political economy-(Rousseau wrote concerning it in the Encyclopædia); and they mean by it the theory of administration, or, as the Germans call it, cameral science, from camera, the exchequer.To statistics is assigned the industrious occupation of collecting facts; and to political economy, the amusive office of deducing the general rules of legislation, and the practical principles of universal application, from an analysis of those facts. In the preface to the Physiokratie of Dupont de Nemours, a neat account occurs of the leading French writers on political economy. It is become the fashionable study: he who is ambitious of the rank of prefect of department, writes an inaugural dissertation on political economy. This author is an avowed pupil of Adam Smith. He says, in the preface, p. vi.

The work of Smith is a confused assemblage of the soundest principles of political economy, supported by luminous examples; and of the most curious notions of statistics, mixed with instructive reflexions; but it is not a complete treatise of either: his book is a chaos of just ideas, hustled pell-mell with positive information.'

So severe a censor has little claim to indulgence.

It is, however, a very usual phænomenon, in the literary world, to deter the reader from consulting the source to which one is most indebted, and to invite his attention to a thousand

and one' writers, who have lent nothing but their title-pages to the decoration of referential notes apparently erudite.

This work is divided into five books. The first treats of production; the second of money; the third of value; the fourth of revenue; and the fifth of consumption. But these are unequal distributions; for the first contains forty-seven, and the third only nine chapters.

From the ninth sub-division, which defends the utility of substituting machinery to human labour, we will translate a passage.

As often as the difficulties are successfully surmounted, which accompany the introduction of new machinery, not only the general advantages result, which I have already indicated, but other particular advantages, to the very class which had originally been deprived of employment. The experience of all times offers proof of this assertion; but one of the most striking is furnished by the machinery which serves to multiply ra pidly the copies of a given manuscript, I mean the printing

press.

'I shall not speak of the influence printing has had on the perfection of human knowledge and the civilisation of the globe-I only mean to consider it as a manufacture, and under its economic relations. When it was first introduced, a number of copyists were thrown out of employ; for a single printer does as much as two hundred copyists. It may at least be cal culated that three compositors will set a sheet in a day, and that two pressmen will strike off a thousand copies. Here are, then, five days' labour spent in making a thousand copies. But a manuscript of this same sheet would employ a single copyist a whole day. It would thus require a thousand copyists, during one day, to accomplish what five printers accomplish in the same time-two hundred, to do the work of one. It follows, that, out of two hundred copyists, one hundred and ninety-nine were likely to become superfluous by the introduction of printing. Yet what has happened? The greater facility of reading printed than manuscript books, the low price to which books have fallen, the encouragement given to authors to compose a greater number, both for instruction and amusement, have occasioned a demand for a far greater number of printers than there were previously of copyists. Add to this the consequent increase of type-founders, paper-makers, bookbinders, and other connected trades; and it will probably appear that one hundred times as many persons are employed by this branch of business now, as found employment in it before the introduction of machinery.' r. 49.

This is a very striking illustration of the advantage of introducing machinery. It also deserves attention, that most ma

chines supersede some ordinary and easy operation of human labour, which is performed by children, or by the ill-educated classes; which any one can do. Such sorts of labour are always ill paid. Machines, therefore, render a portion of the miserable and suffering class unnecessary; but they increase the demand for skilful labour and educated exertion; and thus favour the multiplication of the polished and enjoying classes of society.

In the nineteenth chapter, a comparison occurs of the French and English taste for the arts of industry, which may amuse our manufacturers.

The English, who succeed less than the French in the arts of taste, in architecture, in painting, or in sculpture, surpass, in general, the French in the choice of those forms, designs, and colours, which contribute to the pecuniary profit of the arts of industry. They possess better than the latter that knack in business which consists in applying the knowledge that circulates to the wants of life: they have not, in theoretic mechanics or in chemistry, a Laplace, a Prony, a Monge, or a Berthollet; but, in the application of science to practical use, to the arts of gain, the French do not equal them: they avoid alternately two rocks on which the latter are usually wrecked, routine and versatility.

Not only do they make an astonishing advantage of their very moderate progress in the arts of taste, but they give to every production of their manufactories the irresistible attraction of convenience. Their stuffs, their utensils, are not only agreeable in their forms, their designs, their colours, but they are sure to be those of which the wear and use is most agreeable. Elsewhere men are content if they give to a ewer or a tea-pot the form of an antique vase; but, in England, it must, moreover, be handy, pour glibly, and have an orifice large. enough to be cleaned easily: a handle, with them, has no grace if it hurt the hand. Elsewhere very pretty gowns are made; but they manufacture such as people have occasion to wear. Elsewhere pretty works of industry are made, adapted for the rich, the great, and the curious; but the English make what is the general wear, what is within the compass of every body's pocket, what is bought because it answers.'

P. 133.

The author then proceeds to translate, from the Monthly Magazine, an account of the cotton manufacture, which it would be useless to re-import. In general, the reflexions of our author, though very sound and very proper, have little novelty or importance: his illustrations are often fortunate; and he will assist in popularising a just way of thinking on many points of internal polity.

The French use the word billon (whence our bullion), for a mixed metal containing one fourth of silver and three fourths