MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 359 



doctor for his unwearied ministration to the sound intellectual wants of the 

 age, through the pages of very many future volumes of this most valuable 

 work. 



THE TRADE OP BANKING IN ENGLAND. BY MICHAEL JOHN QUIN, ESQ. 



BARRISTER-AT-LAW. LONDON : BUTTERWORTH. 1833. 

 THIS volume is a history of the Bank of England, and of our provincial 

 banks and joint-stock banking companies ; being principally compiled from 

 the evidence produced before the Committee of the House of Commons, upon 

 the question of the renewal of the Charter of the Bank of England. The 

 author has with great labour and judgment arranged and systematized this 

 evidence into a very useful form ; but as a commentator we do not perceive 

 that he hazards any very decided opinions upon questions of currency and 

 banking. We are very much struck with the wide difference of opinion 

 which here appears in the evidence of our most distinguished merchants and 

 bankers upon the expediency of a national bank and the return to a small 

 paper circulation. It however very clearly appears from this work, that to 

 the fickle issues of the Bank of England has been attributable much of the 

 commercial stagnation of the country ; and that to the withdrawal of the 

 small paper circulation may be justly ascribed a still greater portion of our 

 distress, discontent, and universal alarm for our future situation. Whatever 

 may be the termination of the question of the renewal of the Charter of the 

 Bank of England, we most devoutly desire that a re-consideration of the fatal 

 suppression of the small paper circulation may be among the measures of the 

 present parliament. 



To the banker, merchant, and all those interested in the operation of our 

 banking institutions, we very cordially recommend the work of Mr. Quin as 

 the most comprehensive and clear treatise upon those subjects which has 

 recently issued from the press. 



REFLECTIONS UPON THE FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY OP GREAT 

 BRITAIN SINCE THE WAR. BY A BRITISH MERCHANT, LONG RESI- 

 DENT ABROAD. LONDON : JOHN RIDGWAY. 1833. 



THIS volume is the production of a person of considerable experience, but 

 whose views, we fear, are not sufficiently clear and consistent to make any 

 extraordinary impression upon the rulers of our commercial policy. The 

 author advocates the necessity of even fresh measures of protection for the 

 agricultural interest ; and our late commercial treaties, founded upon the 

 principle of the reciprocity of nations, meet with his very decided condemna- 

 tion. He proposes to increase the protection of the British farmer, not only 

 by fresh duties upon foreign corn, but even upon foreign importations of 

 " leather, bacon, cheese, poultry, eggs, Sec." He complains that " no pro- 

 vision whatever has been made for the sufferings of the agricultnral interest, 

 in years of greatest need as in seasons of scarcity, when a third of the 

 farmer's crop may be sacrificed by his misfortune and not his fault. Such 

 contingencies are of frequent occurrence in Great Britain, and in those years, 

 the price of wheat might be run up to 106s, per quarter." Now here it is 

 forgotten, that in the year of scarcity, the fault of the seasons is no more 

 that of the millions of our manufacturing population, than that of the farmer ; 

 and we cannot praise the liberality of a proposal to increase price, by the 

 ratio of want, in years of distress. 



Upon the subject of our colonial policy, however, the British merchant is 

 evidently more at home ; and his remarks upon the oppressive system of 

 sinecurism, which prevails in all our colonies, are worthy of great attention. 

 The prosperity of the most fertile and valuable of our foreign dependencies 

 would appear to be withered by the presence of immense hordes of aris- 



