tary science are furnished by the evidence given before the various Parliamentary Committees on currency and banking, especially those of 1810, 1819, 1832, and 1841. The witnesses who keep to the facts of their own observation are, of course, the best. Of those who also help to explain those facts, I must express my own obligations to Mr. Horsley Palmer, whose expositions of the working of the Bank of England are always excellent; and to Mr. Gilbart, probably the most qualified of the numerous observers, who surveyed the operations of the money market from a side opposed to that of Mr. Palmer, and yet distinct both from that of Mr. Tooke, and that of Lord Overstone. Mr. Gilbart, whose various works on banking are of essential value to the student, was, I believe, the first to show, and he did show incontestably, that the country bank-note circulation rose and fell according to a regular law, dependent on the habitual course of agricultural transactions. may also say that single sentences from men like Mr. Lewis Loyd, Mr. Rothschild, Mr. Gurney, and, before the bullion committee, Mr. Richardson, who were all their lives immersed in money operations, sometimes contain more useful matter than volumes of abstract disquisition. Of greater importance are the various returns contained in the appendices to the reports, and especially the returns of the weekly balance-sheets of the Bank of England. The latter lay bare, as it were, the very beatings of the heart of the whole monetary system of England during the period which elapsed from 1832 to 1847.

I

Mr. Fullarton's work on the Regulation of Currencies has probably a greater charm for the general reader than any other that exists on the subject. Agreeing with Mr. Tooke in his main principles, and correcting him, as I think, on some points, especially with respect to the influence of what is called "cheap money" in promoting speculation, he has also, by many perfectly original developments and illustrations, for example the operation of hoards in the countries of Asia, and the analysis of the causes of drains of gold, greatly extended the amount of our knowledge.

In what may be called the organized statistics of the subject, great praise is due to the paper of Mr. Danson on the Bank of England, in the "Journal of the Statistical Society," and to the still more original and important contribution of Mr. Newmarch relative to Bills of Exchange, which could only have been produced by the vast and conscientious labour of a man conversant with both the science and the practice of banking. Of the greater statistical works it is scarcely necessary to say that the student of the science of commerce and money requires at every turn the "Commercial Dictionary" of Mr. M'Culloch, and the "Progress of the Nation," by Mr. Porter. Mr. James Wilson's various papers in the Economist newspaper have also been to me of very great value.

The student who attempts to explore this labyrinth finds the air as he enters thick with the dust of innumerable pamphlets-good, bad, and indifferent. The writings of practical bankers are always worth reading,

and especially those of Lord Overstone, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Norman, and Mr. Leatham'. Of the rest I shall only name those of Colonel Torrens, with whom before now I have broken a lance with my vizor down, yet I hope in all courtesy. In his case I have found the maxim to be true that our adversary is our helper. His analyses of banking operations, though not always satisfactory to my mind, have been often suggestive. His definition of money as that which can not only

1 I mention separately, in a note, the name of Lord Ashburton as a practical writer and witness always worth hearing, for the purpose of acknowledging a former error with regard to him. He had the fault, if it be one, most uncommon in a practical man, of seeing disputed questions on both sides; and this gave an unsteadiness to his life and opinions which contrasted unfavourably with the narrow consistency of inferior minds. But it was his fairness that made him successful at Washington, for it was a great success, and averted many evils. At that time I did not think so, but concurred fully in the attacks made upon the treaty by the Morning Chronicle, with which I was then connected. Now, however, that the party heats of that period have cooled down, it appears to me that the importance of the concessions made by Lord Ashburton was exaggerated, and his difficulties much under-estimated, not only in those attacks, but in the criticisms passed upon the treaty by its most distinguished opponent, in the House of Commons. Lord Ashburton certainly violated the maxims of the old diplomacy, but he did so in obedience to other principles which are much more deserving of respect. It was no doubt this necessity which dictated the selection of such an envoy. The exigency was original and perilous, "the file affording no precedent," and history will probably do justice to the statesman-like courage of him who, at such a time, broke through the official routine, and went outside the diplomatic circle to find the fittest man. The famous reproach of "shooting out the whole bag of equivalents" at the feet of the American Minister, was a eulogium. Whenever international morals come to be placed on the right footing, shooting out the whole bag of equivalents will be the golden rule for negotiators.

It is right for me to add, that my connection with the Morning Chronicle ceased soon after the beginning of 1848.

effect the purchase of a commodity, but close the transaction, is his own. It is an arrow in the white.

A tract called "Labour Defended from the Claims of Capital," published in 1825, requires notice, as containing the first clear conception of capital as a mere power distinct from the possession of commodities. This remarkable tract is attributed to Mr. Thomas Hodgskin, well known as an able and accomplished journalist; but a general appreciation of the acuteness and originality of thought which his publication displays was prevented, apparently by the erroneous practical inferences which were prominent in its pages. Some extracts from this pamphlet will be found in the Appendix.

I have yet to name three writers, whose contributions to monetary science appear to me to be only less important than those of Mr. Tooke himself. The first is Mr. Pennington, who, in his paper annexed to the second volume of the "History of Prices," shows how credits in the books of the London bankers operate with the same effect as gold and bank-notes, simply by means of transfer. The second is a writer in the Quarterly Review', on "Accumulations of Capital," unknown to me, but who, in attractiveness of style, rivals Mr. Fullarton. The reviewer describes with perfect accuracy the periodical growth and destruction of money capital as it takes place in England, and if he had pushed the matter a little further my purpose would have been served by taking up and

I No. 163, December, 1847.

applying his conclusions. The last of the three is Mr. Blake, well known as the author of the first clear account of the working of the foreign exchanges, but who deserves still better to be known for his pamphlet on the effects of the Government expenditure during the late war, a work of such masterly clearness and force, at least in respect to that particular point, that I cannot explain how it should have failed, as it did, to produce general conviction, except from the resistance offered to it by that inveterate prejudice which looks to the amount of the currency as a cause operating upon prices. Mr. Blake's service to the science of money was his exhibition of the manner in which capital, being converted into income, as it was in the most rapid manner, by the Government expenditure, became a new source of demand, and operated instantly upon prices and the whole of the national industry. This, I think, is a foundation stone which no logic will be able to disturb, and the conclusions of these various writers are materials which must enter into the structure of a true theory of money.

In taking my stand with Sismondi, Malthus, and Chalmers, and, I ought to add, a high living authority, Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, as to the tendency of capital to accumulate in excess, and with Blake as to the preeminent importance of every extension of demand, or what is commonly called the "market," upon prices and industry, I find myself opposed to the greatest name in English political science, with perhaps the single exception of Burke, and to that of one whose