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duty as may compensate to the British grower the difference of expence at which his corn, &c. can be raised and brought to market, and the expence of its production and bringing to market in other countries. He estimates the general difference in value between the cost of production of wheat in poorer countries and this to be from 35 to 40 shillings a quarter; and therefore, to make security doubly sure, he recommends a permanent duty of 40 shillings per quarter on the importation of foreign wheat: then gravely asking whether he can be charged with demanding its exclusion? as if he did not know that such a duty would be to all intents and purposes exclusive and prohibitory! The last agricultural committee has adopted this preposterous policy, and has recommended the imposition of an uniform duty on foreign corn, equivalent to the difference between its cost of production abroad and the cost of production here, as preferable to any modifica tion of regulations depending upon average prices with an ascend ing and descending scale of duties." Thus, it seems, Mr. Hall has made a very powerful convert: but Mr. Ricardo has well exposed the monstrous absurdity of this reasoning. If the principle, says he, be consistently followed, there is no commodity whatever which we can raise at home that we should ever import from abroad: we should cultivate beet-root, and make our own sugar, and impose a duty on the importation of sugar equal to the difference of expence in growing sugar here, and growing it in the East or West Indies. We should also erect hot-houses, and raise our own grapes for the purpose of making wine, and protect the maker of wine by the same course of policy.

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Either this doctrine is untenable in the case of corn, or it is to be justified in all other cases. Mr. Hall's forty shillings duty would be positive ruin to the farmers, as well as to the rest of the community; and under a free trade, the price of corn in any two countries could not materially differ more than the expences attending the transportation of it from one to the other. If an abundant harvest reduced the price in one, the superfluous produce would find a vent in the other: - but, under prohibitory or high protecting duties, a fall in price in consequence of an abundant harvest must be ruinous to the grower, because he cannot relieve himself by exportation. Mr. Hall says that there is a difference of 35 or 40 shillings in the cost of producing wheat in England and in the corn-countries of the Continent, and he would accordingly have a permanent duty to that amount on its importation. On every occasion, therefore, of abundant harvests in England, Mr. Ricardo has observed that corn must actually fall 40s. (the e total value of it is not at the present moment more than that sum), before it can be the interest of any party to export it.

It appears to us, and we have said so a hundred times, that it is the interest of this country to reduce the necessaries of life as nearly as possible to a level with the value of them in the other great kingdoms of Europe. This can be effected only by reducing the cost of production; and that can be accomplished only by a very large remission of public expenditure. Our manufacturers will

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then be able to produce cheaper, and foreign nations to employ all the productive classes of society in England with reciprocal advantage; while any superabundance in the produce of our soil, which it may please Providence to bestow, may be made serviceable by exportation to some other states, either in Europe or America. Mr. Hall wants high prices: but the consumers of corn in England could not pay high prices; and, if they existed, we should presently be in the unhappy state in which Ireland now is, starving in the midst of plenty. Ireland is not destitute of the necessaries of life: on the contrary, from the centre of the famished districts it is constantly exporting provisions. What then? The laboring classes, having no employment, have no wages to buy the provisions with which they are surrounded: their will to earn is frustrated; and their utmost efforts avail not to support their families by their labor. Mr. Hall does not foresee these consequences, which appall us in looking at his measures. He offers, however, one suggestion in which we entirely concur. It is alleged by him, and his disciples, that all the principal branches of manufacturing and commercial industry are protected against foreign competition by prohibitory, or at least by high duties; and the agriculturists contend that their industry, being at least of equal importance, should enjoy equal protection. In reply, it is stated by Mr. Huskisson, who drew up the first Report, that it may be doubted whether (with the exception of silk) any of our considerable manufactures derive benefit from this assumed protection in the markets of this country; and he argues, strongly, how could the foreign manufactures of cotton, of wool, or of hardware, compete with our own in this country, when it is notorious that we can afford to undersell them in the products of those great branches of our manufacturing industry, even in their own markets: notwithstanding that cotton and wool are subject to a direct duty on importation, (not drawn back on their export in a manufactured state,) as well as to all the indirect taxation which affects capital in these branches, in common with that capital which is employed in raising the productions of the soil? Mr. Hall says, very properly, if such be the honest and real opinion of the merchants and manufacturers, if they really believe that these high protecting duties are inoperative and a dead letter, let them be immediately removed: then will those who are advocates for the freedom of trade only evince the sincerity of their professions, but they will also remove from agricultural petitioners every pretence for those heart-burnings and jealousies on account of this unequal protection, which will otherwise be perpetually objected to it on account of the unnatural preference and partiality which it evinces.' (P. 127.)

Art. 16.

not

Notices on Political Economy; or an Enquiry concerning the Effects of Debts and Taxes; of the State of the Currency and Exchange; and of the Balance of Trade, as they operate on the Community, considered as a Whole. 8vo. pp. 77. Richardson.

We

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We certainly perused half of this pamphlet under the mistake that it was a jeu d'esprit; and the author won our plaudits by the inimitable gravity with which he ascribed to the national debt and taxes the wealth and prosperity of this kingdom. Not a lord of the treasury, not the chancellor of the exchequer, not a secretary of state, in extolling the blessings of a large expenditure, could have preserved a more immovable solemnity of countenance; and we often gave him credit for a command of muscles in himself which mainly contributed to the discomposure of our own: we thought it was Grimaldi playing Lear. Proceeding, however, in a very merry mood, some misgivings now and then crossed us that, after all, the author was in earnest! This was such a damper, such a kill-joy, that we hardly know how to forgive him: but, being of a placable disposition, and feeling conscious that our own relish for a little irony and satire might have contributed to the delusion, we are not disposed to bear malice, although we have been thus cheated of a joke. We must state, then, that these and divers other doctrines equally soothing are to be found inculcated in the Notices on Political Economy.' In whatever light the subject is regarded, says this ingenious gentleman, it will appear quite clear that taxation never can have injured the community considered as a whole, but on the contrary, by encreasing demand, has been a great spur to industry and has thus contributed to encrease the amount of our wealth.' (p. 6.) Though every description of persons is materially benefited by taxation, the laboring classes are blessed by its effects in an especial manner, the whole of the income of government (it seems) being divided among them for all seamen, soldiers, mechanics, artificers, and laborers in the civil and military departments of government are so many men taken out of the market for labor, the consequence of which is that its price is enhanced to those that remain. (p. 8.) It is, however, chiefly the expenditure of the loans contracted by government to which we have been indebted for the immense encrease of our wealth during the last 27 years. The money of the stock-holder has been spread over all the lands, and all the trades, and all the manufactures of the country,' &c. &c. (p. 10.) The author advises government to regulate the wages of labor in every species of employment; until the legislature shall be pleased to fix a minimum to the wages of labour, comparative misery must be the lot, as it ever has been, of the most numerous class of society.' (p. 22. and 23.) What! notwithstanding the advantages which this class derives in so especial a manner from taxation?

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The author sports some whimsical and very original notions about currency, and the standard of value. We cannot go into the minutiæ: but it that he wishes governsuffice to may say ment to become the only coiners or fabricators of money in the country; all bank-notes issued by individuals or corporations. being immediately suppressed, and an equal amount put in circulation by government. The quantity of these notes is to be positively restrained by law to such as it is at present, or within certain

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defined limits, and they are to be made legal tender; added to which the currency is to be of such a nature that it will circulate no where but in this country. (p. 48. 51, 52.) Is it very surprizing to the reader, after these specimens, that we gave the author credit for a good joke, instead of a grave sermon ? His visions of the future glory of England are superlatively magnificent. The exports of Ireland to Great Britain must greatly exceed her imports from it; as a large portion of the income raised in that country is expended in this by the numerous Irish families who reside in England; and such may also, probably, be one day the relative situation of this country and France. Should the Bourbons become Protestants, there would be nothing to stand in the way of the union of the two crowns; - and in such a case, there was no argument employed to prove the expedience of the union of Ireland with Great Britain that would not equally apply to show the expedience of an union of the latter with France; and the parliament of the United Kingdoms would, of course, claim the same power that was exerted by the parliament of Ireland.' (p. 64.) "Visions of glory! spare our aching sight!"

POETRY.

Art. 17, Italy, a Poem. Part the First. 12mo. 7s. Boards. Longman and Co. 1822.

The endless mutability of fashion is never better illustrated than in our modern poetry. There was a time when the Muses inhabited an elevated and ethereal region, accessible only to a favored few, through ramparts and fastnesses which it was not given to all to penetrate. Rarely did those celestial beings deign to visit the plain, to mingle their sacred forms in homely scenes, or to lower the exalted tones of their lyre to the description of little things and every-day occurrences. In our own age, however, this singular revolution has happened, that poetry has wholly laid aside her antient fastidiousness as to the delicacy of her diction, or the dignity of her subjects. Formerly, even in that walk which is Called descriptive, she relaxed little of her wonted dignity: but something of epic grandeur was in her steps, something of Heliconian grace in her demeanour, in her evening rambles over the village-green, and in her descriptions of the pastimes and sports of the rude but happy beings whose groupes gave life and character to the scene. All this seems at present gone by; poetry, no longer

"keeps her wonted state

With even step and musing gait ;"

and the antient and distinctive attributes, which, while they elevated her above prose, distinguished her also from it by an appropriate loftiness of conception, imaged by a corresponding loftiness of expression, are now forgotten and obliterated landmarks. He therefore best adapts his verses to the public ear, who barters away the characteristic dignity of the art for a home-spun

simplicity

simplicity which his admirers mistake for ease, while in reality it is the cold product of a stiff and lifeless affectation.

We might strengthen and illustrate our criticism, but we will mention no names. Those, to whom the features of the old and the modern, school are present, will recognize its justice, and the readers of what is called descriptive poetry will admit and deplore the propriety of our censures. The school of authors, to whom we allude, forget that in poetical description such objects alone ought to be selected as are fit for painting; that is, picturesque in the original sense of the expression. The most stupid bungler in the sister-art of painting, that ever took brush in hand, must be aware that there are many minute things which, though existing in the actual landscape, are not to be minutely painted; that the great scenes of nature have an order and a gradation of ranks, as it were, among its beauties: and that, while the stupendous masses of rock and mountain are called forth by his pencil, he is not required to draw the lichens and shrubs which grow on their surface, or peep out from their interstices. Yet these violations of propriety are by no means rare in our modern descriptive poetry. Every thing which the writer knows to exist in fact, he introduces into his description with the mistaken industry of a Chinese painter; and, thus confounding that which is important with that which is subordinate, he produces a mass of images more or less splendid according to the imagination of the author, but perplexing and confused to the reader, who in vain endeavors to reduce this " purple patch-work" into one congruous and distinct land

scape.

Of this school is the poet who has given us the detached sketches of Italy now on our table. He is gifted with considerable powers: but he permits a certain subdued tameness to deteriorate his compositions, which is a positive indication that he has rebuked and checked those powers in conformity with the theory of his school; under the absurd and erroneous conviction that occasional feebleness is ease, and that in order to be familiar it is necessary to be negligent in direct opposition to the practice of those great masters who described even homely objects with elegance, and did not recognize slovenliness and meanness among the beauties of their art..

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Thus there is something like bathos in the present sketch of the Great St. Bernard; which, though in many respects picturesque and beautiful, forces an involuntary smile when the following incident is introduced :

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Lying on the watch

Two dogs of grave demeanour welcomed me.'

We are here reminded of the town Bull of Uncle Toby, who was a "grave animal.' Yet the picture, which we willingly extract, is not destitute of many graces.

Long could I have stood,
With a religious awe contemplating
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