1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



217 



engaging to keep a journal, which she ac- 

 cordingly does during the whole voyage, 

 and her residence through the winter, a 

 new scene to her, at her uncle's, with a 

 family of young cousins all actively and 

 eagerly occupied in acquiring information 

 under the eye and direction of very intel- 

 ligent and judicious parents. The young 

 Bertha, though so entirely foreign to her 

 previous habits, soon accommodates and 

 enters into the spirit of the thing ; and the 

 daily pursuits of the school-room, the novel- 

 ties out of doors, the conversation of well- 

 informed people, especially of those who 

 have travelled into distant countries, furnish 

 the current topics of the journal. The in- 

 formation thus conveyed is of the most 

 varied kind, though a large proportion is 

 employed on the memorabilia of botany and 

 natural history, but upon nothing of the 

 common-place kind, and all of the latest 

 and most authentic character. Every Sun- 

 day some religious topic is noticed some 

 passage of Scripture illustrated some appa- 

 rent contradiction reconciled, and especially 

 the ceremonials of the Jews are explained ; 

 on good, sound, orthodox principles, of 

 course, but without any attempt to enforce 

 matters of doctrine, and singularly untinged 

 with party-spirit. The elements of geology 

 also are detailed, in the principles of Cony- 

 beare and Phillips ; and a little touch of 

 metaphysics, we observed, after the manner 

 of Mr. Dugald Stewart, distinguishing, very 

 nicely, judgment and taste, as two faculties, 

 &c. Manners, morals, and character, are, of 

 course, carefully attended to by the excel- 

 lent uncle and aunt ; and Bertha, who is a 

 very honest little girl, has the satisfaction 

 of conveying to her mamma, on the autho- 

 rity of her uncle, her progresses in improve- 

 ment her happy exchange of indolence 

 for activity neatness for untidiness frank- 

 ness for shyness, with many other budding 

 virtues, which are likely to ripen during the 

 projected tour of all the party in Ireland. 

 This tour will of course extend her journal, 

 which not only young but old may read 

 with pleasure, and no little chance of gather- 

 ing knowledge. 



Political Economy. An Inquiry into 

 the Natural Grounds of Right to Vendible 

 Property or Wealth. By Samuel Read , 

 1829 Writers on Political Economy ge- 

 nerally define their science, as what deter- 

 mines the laws which regulate the produc- 

 tion and distribution of wealth. Mr. Read 

 thinks it not only of prior, but of higher 

 importance to determine, first, the natural 

 grounds of right to the said wealth, which 

 he, for the sake of a more specific term, 

 chooses to call vendible property, and frames 

 the title of his work in accordance with this 

 view. This is making, we think, a great 

 fuss about nothing, and a fuss far from 

 harmless ; for nothing is harmless which 

 takes the attention from the real pith of 

 a subject, and fixes it upon inferior or 



MMNew Series VOL. IX, No. 50. 



foreign considerations. If political econo- 

 mists have not formally discussed the 

 grounds of right, those rights have always 

 been implied in their discussions; and 

 in point of fact, and it may be added, with 

 any tolerable government, inevitably, civil 

 rights are, for the most part, built upon 

 those perhaps sufficiently understood prin- 

 ciples of natural right. 



But though Mr. Read takes more credit 

 than we think due to him, on this point, 

 or useful for the discussion of the sub- 

 ject, his book is an excellent one f and 

 especially throughout the whole of the 

 controversial matter. Its chief merit, in- 

 deed, and in the present puzzled state 

 of the " science," that is no slight one, 

 is the attempt to rescue it from the clutches 

 of the mathematical economists, into which 

 it has unluckily fallen, and place it again 

 within the province of plain facts, common 

 experience, and moral reasoning. He finds 

 no advantage has been conferred on the 

 " science" by Adam Smith's improvers. 

 Ricardo's doctrines, especially, appear to 

 him to be a set of mere sophistications, and 

 we fully agree with him. That man a 

 clever man, and a reasoning one upon given 

 data, but incapable of estimating the sound- 

 ness of those data a man, moreover, in 

 possession of half a million, and, therefore, of 

 course, in England, if such a person write a 

 book, it must be one of authority, at least as 

 long as the writer has aught to give that 

 man has done more mischief in these mat- 

 ters than any man of his time. Some of 

 his doctrines, it is true, such as that of rent, 

 were merely speculative, for nobody acts 

 upon them ; but others have had a prac- 

 tical effect, and woeful in proportion to the 

 effect, such as his sentiments on bullion 

 and paper, and especially his conclusions on 

 the subject of profit and wages. These, 

 profit and wages we mean, according to 

 Mr. Ricardo, vary inversely to each other, 

 and his rule, which, of course, the masters 

 welcomed with pleasure, thinking the game 

 must be in their own hands to keep up 

 profits, you must keep down wages. To 

 justify this doctrine and precept, he prefaced 

 them with another maxim, that the natural 

 amount of wages was that which would just 

 enable the labourers to live, and keep up 

 their numbers. Never was greater nonsense 

 uttered ; but the terms of this " law" were 

 so precise and clear, so mathematical and 

 exact, and with such a perfect absence of 

 doubt, as to leave an impression which any 

 memory could retain, and the grounds of 

 which it seemed superfluous to consider. It 

 was, to most minds, an axiom, and what is 

 the advantage of an axiom if it must be 

 perpetually reconsidered? But, notwith- 

 standing, profit and wages are not always in 

 opposition scarcely, indeed, ever ; and still 

 less is the lowest possible quantum of sub- 

 sistence the natural rate of wages ; and Mr. 

 Read, though not the first who has done it, 

 has done well in exposing these absurdities 

 2F 



