citement and depression. With him, however, it was only what Mr. Mill calls an "empirical generalization," a generalization, indeed, which none but a scientific mind could have made; but still empirical, because it was not traced back to its causes. But then it was a reality. He, a man of high intellect and great practical insight, placed at the very best point for observation, saw the facts. Science is good for nothing if she cannot explain them. Hitherto she has not explained them. Very near approaches to the truth, however, had been previously made, on the side of abstract speculation, by Sismondi, Malthus, and Chalmers, all of whom were, as I conceive, better observers of social phenomena than either Say or Ricardo, and even than one who was in some respects greater than any of them-James Mill. That great philosopher, who is yet so far from being appreciated in England; whose most important scientific work, the "Analysis of the Human Mind," has not even been reprinted; and whose worst, the angry critique on Mackintosh, however grievously unjust to the subject of the criticism, was but the overflowing of a soul that hated cant and the petty arts that raise mean men to eminence; deserves for the rugged strength and immense grasp of his intellect to stand side by side with Hobbes, whom he loved and defended. But, like Hobbes, his dogmatic preconceptions did not suffer him to see truly the complex, delicate, and varying phenomena of living society. The mind of Sismondi, on the other hand, was not dog

matic, but historical, and was enriched with a vast treasure of facts derived from actual observation in Italy, Switzerland, France, and England. Glowing in unison with all the nobler emotions of man, it was also full of the finer filaments of sympathy with common joys and sorrows, essential to him who attempts to trace or teach laws directly bearing upon human life.

Malthus, I conceive, has higher claims to a place in economical history than those derived from his celebrated theory of population, which seems to be already tottering'. And Chalmers, with his keen perception of real social evils, and his strong clear intellect, rendered doubly effective by his moral energy, was the man who began that baptism, so to speak, of political economy into Christianity, which was the main thing needful to bring about its regeneration. The authority of these, or of any one of them, would with me outweigh that of Say, clear expositor as he was, or that of the amiable and admirable, but much overrated, Ricardo2. But it is scarcely just to those eminent

1 I speak without any decided opinion upon the attacks of Mr. Doubleday, Mr. Hickson, and, more formidable than either, the judicially impartial statement of the hostile evidence in the Morning Chronicle of March and April, 1850, in some very able papers, which were attributed to Mr. Newmarch.

2 Of course I refer only to his intellect. A man who could inspire attachment in others, as he did, must have had the noblest personal qualities. Here is a passage in which Mr. M'Culloch first gives his own opinion, and then quotes that of Mr. James Mill :—

"His works have made a very great addition to the mass of useful and universally interesting truths, and afford some of the finest examples to be met with of discriminating analysis, and of profound and refined discussion. The brevity with which he has stated some of his most import

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writers to regard them as having only approached the true law of the increase of capital. In fact, they saw the very same phenomena which Lord Overstone so happily generalized into cycles of excitement and depression, though from an opposite side; but between the standing point of the practical banker and that of the more abstract speculators there long intervened a tangled wilderness, which without the discussions and information of the last few years must have remained impassable.

The foundations of a true monetary science, however, have been really laid by the writings, and especially the later writings, of Mr. Tooke, which render him, in my view, the second father of English political economy. Clear and pure in diction, they yet do not possess that ant propositions; their intimate dependence on each other; the fewness of his illustrations; and the mathematical cast he has given to his reasoning, render it sometimes a little difficult for readers, unaccustomed to such investigations, readily to follow him. But we can venture to affirm, that those who will give to his works the attention of which they are so worthy, will find them to be as logical and conclusive as they are profound and important."

"The history of Mr. Ricardo,' to use the words of Mr. Mill, holds out a bright and inspiring example. Mr. Ricardo had everything to do for himself; and he did everything. Let not the generous youth, whose aspirations are higher than his circumstances, despair of attaining either the highest intellectual excellence, or the highest influence on the welfare of his species, when he recollects in what circumstances Mr. Ricardo opened, and in what he closed, his memorable life. He had his fortune to make, his mind to form; he had even his education to commence and conduct. In a field of the most intense competition, he realized a large fortune, with the universal esteem and affection of those who could best judge of the honour and purity of his acts. Amid this scene of active exertion and practical detail, he cultivated and he acquired habits of intense, and patient, and comprehensive thinking; such as have been rarely equalled, and never excelled." "

inexpressible charm of style which must ever make the "Wealth of Nations" the favourite hand-book of the economical student; but they evince, throughout, that love of truth which gladly submits to the teaching of every fact, and that habitual dwelling of the mind upon realities rather than upon abstractions, which distinguished Adam Smith, and which renders even the mistakes of such men full of instruction. Mr. Tooke's pursuits as a merchant were peculiarly favourable to observation. The nice balance of the perceptive and philosophical faculties in his mind-the former in their action always preceding and supplying materials for the cautious inductions of the latter-caused his opportunities to be turned to the most profitable account. The "History of Prices" was literally “hived up,” during each of many studious and observing years, until at length the ripe product of the whole was deposited in his pamphlet of 1844. Some of his earlier views Mr. Tooke has abandoned, and the position which he maintained against Mr. Blake I conceive must also be abandoned; but the value of his luminous exposition of the actual movement of commerce and prices, and of the effects of varying seasons and mercantile miscalculations, during the last half century, will remain substantially unaffected by those corrections, whilst his conception of the aggregate of income as that which determines prices on the side of the consumer, and his view of the amount of the currency as the effect of prices, must be immovable pillars in the

building up of a science of money. One pure and polished block of marble is presented to the hand of the architect by Mr. Bailey's theory of value, though that lucid writer did not succeed in extricating the whole of the truth from the errors of his opponents. A more important contribution is furnished by Mr. Senior in his lectures on the precious metals. From the character of his mind, and, perhaps in no slight degree from his Oxford training, Mr. Senior has been more successful than any predecessor in dealing with the language of political economy. His definition of profit as the "remuneration of abstinence" was of itself an immense advance towards the clearing up of all the relations between capital and labour. It sweeps away at one stroke a mass of absurdities which were deduced naturally enough from the forced and inaccurate abstractions of Ricardo. Wine has no longer to toil as it mellows in the cask, and windmills cease to earn wages. Production is not bought by one sacrifice, but by two, neither of which is by any analysis resolvable into the other. Those sacrifices are labour and abstinence. The separation and habitual antagonism of these two forces is the ground law of political economy. Unhappily, but, as man exists, inevitably, it is also the ground law of modern society.

A mass of information of the most important kind is contained in Mr. Thornton's well-known work on Paper Credit. Other valuable contributions to mone