respective circulands of the farmer, the miller and the baker. We can tolerate the whim of introducing a new word in this instance, since the author deemed it necessary for precision; but our forbearance cannot be extended to the absurd notion, which is afterwards introduced, that public wealth is promoted with a degree of rapidity proportionate to the exorbitance of the charge which every one makes for his labour or commodities.. Does Mr. Gray really hold, as a fundamental doctrine in political economy, that wealth is created by high prices? It is indeed known to every one, that it is only in rich countries that high prices can be obtained; but it must be at least extremely parodoxical to maintain, that we should all get richer were we to pay twenty guineas for a coat, five pounds for a pair of shoes, and half a guinea for a quartern loaf. We are loathe to call any thing nonsense that appears in a splendid quarto, with the name of its author prefixed; but we have no other word which would express our opinion so well, both of the doctrine which we have just stated and more particularly of that which is to follow. We find it set down in this work, notwithstanding the unanswerable reasoning of Smith and of the French economists, that every kind of labour, or as it is here expressed, every kind of circuland, is alike productive of public wealth. It is, in fact, boldly asserted that a song from the throat of Catalani, or a speech from the mouth of Kean, contributes as much to the riches of Great Britain, as the labour of a ploughman or the unrivalled ingenuity of a Birmingham or Manchester artizan. When an erroneous opinion is thus caracatured in the manner of its statement, it sufficiently answers itself; and we have really no wish to throw away our circuland in exposing the absurdity of a doctrine, when the author has already done it to our hands. We have only to show, by quoting the following sentence, that we have not misrepresented his views; for some such evidence will perhaps appear necessary to those who are not aware to what lengths an ingenious mau will go in support of a favourite theory. "What possible difference can it make," he demands, "that one man is enabled to charge by means of turning up the soil with a plough; a second by bringing tones out of an instrument; a third by raising corn or feeding cattle; a fourth by inculcating the principles of religion and morality; a fifth by thrusting a shuttle between the divisions of the warp; a sixth by making letters with a pen on paper; a seventh by throwing water on cotton cloth to whiten it; an eighth by rehearsing speeches from Shakespeare; a ninth by singeing the wooliness of the surface of muslin off; a tenth by tripping it lightly before an audience on a stage; an eleventh by carrying heavy packages slowly along the street; and a twelfth twelfth by collecting the debts due to private individuals, or the assessments of the nation?" Were it not that this political heresy has laid hold of other heads than our author's, and has shown itself in the writings of certain journalists, who, on almost every other subject, implicitly follow the doctrines of Adam Smith, we should not be tempted to notice it at greater length in the present article. A few words will suffice. Labour, then, we maintain, when regarded with a reference to national wealth, is, according to the views of economists and of Smith, either productive or unproductive. We say, when viewed with a reference to the aggregate wealth of a nation; for nothing is more obvious than that the income of particular individuals, or classes of men, may be increased without any addition being thereby made to the mass of public riches. We may adduce as an instance of this, the very honourable professions of law and physic; the gains arising from which, however much they may add to the private revenue of the practitioners, cannot be regarded as additional wealth secured to the country. Such gains are but a tranfer of so much property from one, hand to another, and the physician only spends a certain share of what his patient would otherwise have laid out. What addition, we would ask, is made to our national wealth by the theatres or opera-house; or how much richer did we become from the visit of the Indian Jugglers! Labour in all these cases is, no doubt, productive as it respects the labourer, that is to say, it increases his private revenue; but, as it respects the public, it is certainly unproductive. It merely becomes a channel for the circulation of money from one pocket to another, without adding one farthing to its amount: it enables the lawyer, the physician, the opera-dancer and the player to go to market and purchase goods, to the exact extent to which the means of their employers have been diminished, by the payment of their fees or salaries. But the case alters entirely with respect to labour in agriculture or manufactures. The man who pays for such labour, derives from it, not only its own price, and the proper hire for the instruments which are used by the labourer, but also a clear profit over and above all charges. The Birmingham manufacturer, for example, who pays a guinea a week for a man's labour, is understood to reap from the work of that labourer not only the guinea he paid out, and the interest of the money expended in the building of houses and the purchase of tools, but likewise, in addition to all this, a shilling or eighteen-pence of profit; which, in the first place, adds so much to his wealth, and secondly to the wealth of the country. He gets back, in short, from the work man, man, not only as much, in the shape of manufactured goods, as would purchase a guinea's worth of labour, but as much as would purchase labour to the amount of twenty-two shillings and upwards; and, in this way, he could afford to pay the labourer during any number of years, and would all the time be gradually getting richer. Apply this standard, however, to Ma, dame Catalani and the Jugglers. You pay half a guinea to hear a song or see a trick of legerdemain. Suppose you go once a week to such amusements for a whole year, and you will have given away twenty-six guineas. Are your guineas replaced in your pocket by what you see or hear? No: then you must admit that such kind of labour consumes, without reproducing, the money of him who purchases it. But Mr. Gray will say the labour of the Juggler is as productive as that of the Birmingham artizan, because it enables him to charge for it; but we say, in reply, that this is not the sense in which the term productive was used by Dr. Smith and his predecessors in France, and that there is all the difference in the world between enriching an individual and enriching a nation. Jugglers and songsters, and various other orders of men, may happen to acquire wealth, while the people who feed them may be sinking into poverty; whereas people employed in agriculture and manufactures are constantly found to diffuse wealth over the whole country in which they are so fortunate as to improve their private fortunes. The labour of the husbandman will draw from an acre of land ten times the amount of its natural unassisted produce; and manufacturing industry operating upon a pound of fax or cotton, will augment its changeable value perhaps a thousand fold. The hardware of Sheffield and Birmingham, and the manufactures of Manchester and Paisley, bring into the ports of Great Britain, in the shape of French and American produce, an incalculable amount of wealth, if compared with the original price of the material with which it is paid. We see the silks of Lyons and the wines of Burgundy and Champagne purchased with a piece of manufactured iron-stone, to which skill and labour have given its whole value; and, cargoes of cotton are every day reaching our shores, which the ingenious industry of our countrymen sends back to the land where it grew, so much increased in its exchangeable value, that a pound will sometimes pay for a ton. And is it possible, in the face of such instructive and notorious facts, for an author to stand up and tell the world, that a woman who sings a song, or a man who recites a speech from Shakespeare, contributes as much to public wealth as the manufacturer or the ploughman! It would after all have been nothing, had Mr. Gray contented himself with the privilege, which every author enjoys, of advanc ing ing paradoxes and of reasoning unintelligibly; but he chooses to get into a violent passion with those who have the misfortune to differ with him, and to give the very worst name, he can think of, to such as hold the distinction of productive and unproductive labour. He declares that their opinions are equally injurious to the happiness of individuals and to the public tranquillity ;-that they endanger the wisest institutions of a country-that they are not merely unfounded, but are formed in defiance of the whole mass of facts set before us by Nature, and in direct opposition to her clearest dictates. Will men," he exclaims " never become wise? Will they never learn to look at facts with their own eyes, and to draw the conclusions that seem forced on them by common sense? Is the case entirely hopeless? Are they resolved to insult nature in order to torment themselves? Is it the purpose of all to attend to the unfounded theories of wrong-headed speculators, and the trashy declamations of ill designing demagogues, in order to make themselves discontented and unhappy: and to reject the sober counsels of nature, which would lead them to content and to happiness? If they will play so unwise a part, they must suffer; but nature is not to blame, she is wise and benevolent; but they listen to wicked men or to fools." So much for a harmless opinion on an abstract point in political economy; and so well does it become certain writers to talk of the "trashy declamations" of Turgot, Smith, and Malthus! In the IIId Book, which is devoted to the consideration of the દ્વંદ Exchanging Species of Circuland, or Money," there are somę sensible remarks, and more particularly in the chapters which treat of bank paper, its uses, and its depreciation. We are decidedly of the author's opinion, that as long as bankers merely answer the natural demand which is created by the trade of the country, no possible harm can arise from any assignable issue of notes, even although the restriction act were to be perpetuated. It is not until parsimony is forced upon a nation by the wants of government, or by the cupidity of short sighted speculators, that credit is impaired and depreciation is rendered inevitable. But all this is trite and vapid, as being obviously intelligible and recommended too, by the opinions of sensible men. We therefore hasten to Book IV. where we breathe a different atmosphere, and walk with Mr. Gray in a region peculiarly his own. The subject is POPULATION;" and we assure our readers that, if Mr. Malthus has hinted the necessity of occasionally keeping down what he called the "elastic principle," our author recommends the most unlimited freedom of operation. Population Population with him is every thing; it is wealth, happiness, and power; and that man is no friend to his country who does not beget as many sons and daughters as a three-tailed bashaw. Let us state, in the first place, how much according to his views, remains to be done in this way, before this great country can-be pronounced a happy state. We have at present a population of about sixteen millions; but as Mr. Gray is satisfied that we could find food for five and forty millions and five hundred thousand, we have to make up, with all expedition, the supple mentary number of twenty-four millions and a half. Scotland according to the last returns, contains a little upwards of one million eight hundred thousand; but as her complement ought to be upwards of ten millions, she has still to make forthcoming, in the way of supplementary procreation, not less than eight millions and six hundred and fifty thousand beings to wear breeches or petticoats long or short. Now, when it is taken into consideration that the northern part of this island does not nearly support or employ the number of people at present produced in it, but that thousands emigrate every year to search for subsistence in more favoured regions of the earth, what, we ask, would be the consequence of their number being quintupled? They would spread over the empire like the locusts in the land of Egypt, covering the face of the whole earth, so that the land would be darkened, and they would eat every herb of the field and all the fruit of the trees. Our author, however, has suggested an excellent preventive against such an influx of hungry neighbours, which is, to multiply so fast ourselves that we shall have nothing to spare. England and Wales are exhorted to encrease their quota eight millions and nine hundred and seventy thousand souls; which if they are wise enough to do, we shall have, south of the Tweed, a population of nearly nineteen millions, and, of course, starvation sufficient to frighten away all visitors. Having established it, then, as a fundamental principle in political economy, that the shortest way to get rich and happy is to secure a crowded population, Mr. Gray next bethinks himself of prescribing the most effectual means for the speedy procreation of children. The first is, marry youug, and the next is, live on bread and water. Among all the defecundating causes which he has detested, there is none so determined an enemy to population as good living. If persisted in by families, its deleterious influence he says encreases from father to son till they actually die out. It may be generally affirmed, too he remarks, that, whereas labouring with the body has a fecundating virtue, labouring with the mind has an influence of the opposite kind. Deep abstruse thinking, indeed much thinking of any of the |