Page images
PDF
EPUB

from foreign exportation, although it increases the property of the individual, does not appear to augment the public wealth of the nation. It adds however greatly to the resources of the state, through the medium of taxes and the more extended division of property, which operates powerfully in augmenting the revenues of the state."

Now we are of opinion that the value of the inland trade is here exceedingly under-rated, and much as we respect our author, its nature and its advantages he seems to have misconceived.

[ocr errors]

"All wholesale trade," says Dr. Smith, vol. ii. chap. 5. " all buying in order to sell again by wholesale, may be reduced to three different sorts: the home trade, the foreign trade of consumption, and the carrying trade. The home trade is employed in purchasing in one part of the same country and selling in another the produce of the industry of that country. It comprehends both the inland and the coasting trade. The foreign trade of consumption is employed in purchasing foreign goods for home consumption. The carrying trade is employed in transacting the commerce of foreign countries, or in carrying the surplus produce of one to another. The capital which is employed in purchasing in one part of the country in order to sell in another, the produce of the industry of that country generally replaces by every such operation two distinct capitals that had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of that country, and thereby enables them to continue that employment. When it sends out from the residence of the merchant a certain value of commodities, it generally brings back in return at least an equal value of other commodities. When both are the produce of domestic industry, it necessarily replaces by every such operation two distinct capitals, which had both been employed in supporting productive labour, and thereby enables them to continue that support. The capital which sends Scotch manufactures to London and brings back English corn and manufactures to Edinburgh, necessarily replaces by every such operation two British capitals, which had both been employed in the agriculture or manufactures of Great Britain. The capital which sends British goods to Portugal and brings back Portuguese goods to Great Britain, replaces by every such operation only one British capital; the other is a Portuguese one. Though the returns therefore of the foreign trade of consumption should be as quick as those of the home trade, (and in the nature of things they must always be more slow and more uncertain) the capital employed in it will give but one half the encouragement to the industry or productive labour of the country."

And again. "A capital employed in the home trade will sometimes make twelve operations, or be sent out and returned twelve times before a capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption has made one. If the capitals are equal, therefore, the one

+

will give four and twenty times more encouragement and support to the industry of the country than the other."

Yet Mr. Colquhoun tells us that this inland trade does not appear to augment the public wealth of the nation.

The foreign commerce of the united kingdom is deduced from the official returns of the year 1818, which afford these splendid results:

The exports were ......... £73,725,603
The imports were 60,424,876

The vessels employed were 28,061 ships of the burthen of 3,160,293 tons, navigated by 184,352 men. This immense trade, (not including the distinct and separate trade of all the foreign dependencies, both of the crown and the East India Company) is supposed to give employment to 406,250 individuals, and to yield a profit of £46,373,748. We cannot omit to anticipate the observation which the future historian and litician will make on this prodigious extent of our commerce at the close of that eventful contest which lays our enemies prostrate before us. It was a contest in which all Europe had peared in array against us, for the sole object of dissolving our commercial connections, and excluding us from the markets of Europe. The hostile jealousy of Europe was so entirely foiled in the accomplishment of its object, that, as it were in revenge for the injuries it had suffered in the prosecution of it, at last a great confederacy was formed against the rash projector of so hopeless a warfare, which, under the guidance of our mighty arm, terminated in his destruction.

ap

'The coasting trade, our great nursery for seamen, employs 8070 vessels, which make 27,370 voyages, convey 4,105,500 tons of merchandize, and yield a profit of £2,000,000 a year, on a moderate computation.

Of the fisheries, which admit of incalculable increase, the present profits do not exceed £2,100,000.

It is calculated that 871 banks, established in the empire, including as well the great national corporations as those of the most limited credit, employ capital to the amount of £40,700,000, yielding direct annual profit to the amount of £3,500,000.

But the importance of the system of banking, extended over the whole empire, and brought to almost incredible perfection, is not to be estimated by the direct profits of those embarked in that concern; they are to be regarded, in their respective departments, as the administrators of a function the most important that can be imagined in political economy, the organs of public credit and the regulators of the credit to be enjoyed by all private adventurers. By their operations, which proceed with

S

VOL. IV. SEPTEMBER, 1815

the

the utmost precision and rapidity, and with an effect almost magical, all commercial transactions, both of the utmost magnitude and of the lowest denomination, are conducted, between persons at the most distant places, and respectively unknown, with a facility which no other system can afford, and which no other country now perfectly enjoys, or probably ever will enjoy. By their proceedings, all the energies of industry and speculation are called into action, and the means of reproduction are almost rendered infinite. Theirs is the vast machine which gives life to every political and commercial principle, and impels through all society the otherwise stagnant accumulations of property. While their vast machinery supplies the want, nay even appears almost to supersede the use of the precious metals as a circulating medium, it performs what all the bullion of the world would not be able to perform. Every day the bankers in Loudon alone pay and receive to the amount of £4,700,000. Ten or twenty times that amount would be required to make those payments in specie in the endless variety of sums into which it is divided. By the operation of banking, these payments, amounting in the year to 1457 millions, are effected every night by the actual exchange of about £220,000 in bank notes, which is equal to all the differences of the several houses. The incalculable payments of the whole empire are accomplished by about 20 millions of Bank of England notes, circulating with astonishing rapidity, and imparting their velocity to the bills of private credit, which are current only as they are convertible at every instant into the notes of the Bank of England.

Our author calculates the foreign income remitted from all parts to support the proprietors residing in Great Britain at five millions.

His recapitulation of all the calculations of the annual proceeds of the empire, or as he terms it, the new property annually created, is for the year 1812, including the conquests given of 1814: up at the peace

[blocks in formation]

We highly commend this first attempt "to examine minutely, by the rules of political arithmetic, the various component parts

which constitute the wealth of the British empire." Our author has toiled in a field which was before unexplored. Without supposing that the labour is accomplished, and the treasure of knowledge, which was there concealed, is wholly brought to light, we cannot sufficiently applaud the ingenuity of his speculations, the industry with which he has pursued them, and the value of his important discoveries.

To be concluded in our next.]

1

ART. III. A Circumstantial Narrative of the Campaign in
Russia, embellished with Plans of the Battles of the Moskwa
and Malo-jaroslavitz, containing a faithful Description of
the affecting and interesting Scenes, of which the Author
was an Eye-witness. By Eugene Labaume, &c. &c.; trans-
lated from the French. Third Edition, considerably im
proved. 8vo. 442 pp.
12s. 6d. Leigh. 1815.

SO rapidly has our imagination been hurried through a succes-
sion of events unexampled in the records of the world, that
the two last. years of our existence constitute almost an age; to
transactions even a few months prior to this momentous period,
we look back as to the deeds of former days, and the lively im-
pressions which their magnitude then made upon us, are now
lost, in the obscurity of general remembrance. To the first
grand link in this tremendous chain we are therefore happy in
finding our attention recalled by a volume, which is more worthy
of its subject than any detail, with which we have hitherto been
presented; and which promises to preserve fresh in our memo-
ries the strange and eventful history of that bloody and disas-
trous expedition, to which the downfall of the tyrant is so justly

to be referred.

If Dr. Johnson, when he wrote his pamphlet on the Falkland Islands, had been desirous of detailing the misery and wretchedness of the army of Napoleon in their retreat from Moscow, he could not have expressed in a stronger or more energetic manner the havoc of war, and the hardships of a campaign. Indeed before such an event had taken place, in looking over those three pages so justly celebrated in our English literature, we could not divest ourselves of that incredulity which forbid us to believe that so much misery could really exist in nature;' our prejudice also in favour of military glory, and the feeling of humanity itself, both concurred to bias our judgment, and urged us to charge the learned Doctor with visionary exagge

[blocks in formation]

ration, rather than be persuaded of the truth and reality of his observations. Accustomed from our infancy to admire the deeds of valour, we looked with some sort of respect, or sometimes with envy on those brave men who have devoted their lives to the defence of their respective empires. Ignorant of the hardships of a campaign, we considered war as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some, indeed, must perish in the most successful field, but they die upon the bed of honour, they resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and filled with their country's glory, smile even in death.

But the life of a modern soldier, says Johnson, now much to our purpose, is ill represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon, and the sword. Of the thousands and thousands that perish during the course of a campaign, a very small part ever feels the stroke. of an enemy: the rest languish in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction, victims of hunger and cold, pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of helpless misery, and are at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice, and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, by want of food, and by exposure to all the inclemency of the severest weather, where courage is useless and enterprize impracticable, fleets are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted away.

The book which now lies open before us is a sad illustration of this terrible truth. In reviewing, on the Niemen, the wretched remains of the followers of Napoleon, we can hardly recognize the soldiers of one of the finest armies that ever marched to a conquest in all the splendor of its attire, and in all the brilliancy of the most minute appointments, chiefly composed of veterans, full of ardour, experience, and courage, and devoted to a chief whom a long course of uninterrupted victories had made them consider as invincible. This is the event which Labaume intends to relate. It was the first, the only irretrievable step that hurled Napoleon from the throne.

Our author was one of the actors in this most memorable campaign. He was attached to the engineers of the fourth corps, better known by the name of the army of Italy, con manded by the Prince Viceroy Eugene Beauharnois, and of this corps especially, he speaks during the whole of the narrative. He relates that only which he has seen. A witness of the greatest disasters that ever befel a great nation, a spectator and actor in every scene of this sad and memorable expedition, he presents the reader with no fictitious narrative, artfully arranged,

« PreviousContinue »