Matters will remain in this state until the stock of manufactured articles is brought below the natural demand; trade will then revive, and for a time be profitable; confidence will be restored, bills again be granted, discounts will follow, paper currency will increase, prices will continue to rise, production will be pushed to the last extremity, every thing will appear to flourish for a time, till another crash arrives, and then we shall be told about the calamities of life and commercial distress, and perhaps see a little deeper into the causes, and at last look for a remedy.

According to our view, instead of the abolition of onepound bank-notes being an evil, the only fault of the measure is, that it does not go far enough, and do away with bank-paper altogether. We fear that the national debt would become an intolerable burden if this was done; but, nevertheless, as long as we suffer a paper currency to exist, a currency which can be produced without labour, and increased without limits, and which enables the issuer of it to reap double profits at the expense of those who do not issue bank-notes, so long will the nation be doomed to suffer the punishment which follows every departure from justice and sound principle. It has been said, that the holder of L.20,000 of capital may lend this sum, and he will easily get credit for other L.20,000 on the faith of it, and that thus he will be on a par with a banker who invests his capital, and then issues notes. But there is this difference, the banker and capitalist are, no doubt, on a par in both drawing a return for their L.20,000 if they lend them; but when the latter goes to market and asks credit for L.20,000 worth of goods, he has to pay the credit price, or 24 per cent. for three months, whereas the issuer of notes pays his notes for the goods, and gets this per centage of discount. Here the injustice of the principle is equally obvious.

Our limits prevent us from tracing out all the evils of the paper system in their minute ramifications; but we take our stand here, that its principles are unjust and unnatural, and

that all its consequences must be evil. We proceed, therefore, to apply Phrenology to this subject. According to our view, the Creator has framed the world on the principle of the predominance of the higher sentiments; that is to say, if mankind will condescend to seek their chief gratifications in the exercise of Benevolence, Veneration, Conscientiousness, and intellect, they will be exempt in an amazing degree from calamity, while they will suffer continually-recurring misery so long as they place their highest enjoyments in the gratification of the lower propensities. It is an undeniable fact, that the inhabitants of Britain generally are involved in a chase of wealth, power, and personal aggrandisement, or the gratification of Acquisitiveness, Self-esteem, and Love of Approbation, to the exclusion of every thing like systematic cultivation of the proper human faculties before enumerated. Now, if our principle be correct, they never can be happy while this is the case. If the Creator has intended the higher powers to prevail, his whole arrangements must be in harmony with them, and the world must be so constituted that it is possible for every individual to reap the enjoyment for which existence is given. By the gratification of the human powers, we do not mean mere psalm-singing and superstitious devotion, but enlightened religion, the exercise of habitual benevolence, justice, and respect between man and man, the reciprocal communication of knowledge, and the systematic exercise of the intellect in studying the laws of creation. For these ends a portion of time every day is requisite; but on the present system the whole energies, bodily and mental, of millions of our population, are expended in ministering to the gratification of Acquisitiveness, Self-esteem, Love of Approbation, and still lower animal propensities; and, if suffering follows this course of conduct, men have themselves to blame. If, by the arrangements of the Creator, the labour of six or seven hours a-day is amply sufficient for the full satisfaction of every desire that mere physical objects can gratify, and if the other hours, not necessary for sleep, were intended for the

exercise and gratification of the moral and intellectual powers, then men, by devoting their whole time to the former, and neglecting the latter, must necessarily produce evil to themselves. Accordingly, this is the actual state and result of matters in Britain at the present time. The labouring population are forced to work ten or twelve hours a-day; this creates a great redundancy of goods; then they are thrown entirely idle, and suffer infinite misery, and their masters are involved in bankruptcy and ruin. The bank-notes, by enabling the masters to force production at this rate, which without them would be impossible, greatly contribute to this evil. The Creator's laws, at the same time, shew themselves paramount even in the breach of them; for if the months, days, and hours of idleness which follow regularly, on every stagnation of trade, had been distributed over the working days, they would have reduced each day's toil to the precise extent that was really necessary for the satisfaction of actual human wants;-and the same law will continue to rule the world whether men recognise it or not. If the masters could be persuaded to establish schools, libraries, and every means of moral and intellectual cultivation, and allow their workmen systematically to cultivate their human faculties for three or four hours a-day, trade would go regularly on, there would be no gluts of the market, profits would be steady, crime would diminish, and a flood of moral and intellectual enjoyment would spread over the land, that would render earth the porch of heaven.

These ideas, we fear, will be regarded by many as Utopian; but we may notice a practical illustration of them, which, we think, will be generally recognised. By the combination laws, the workmen were punishable for joining together in a resolution to have their wages raised. This was clearly in opposition to justice. The wisdom of our present excellent ministers repealed this enactment. Last summer and autumn extensive combinations were formed among the operative workmen for a rise of wages, and they struck work for several months because their demands were not complied with. The

masters and the conductors of the public press clamoured against ministers, and complained that the country would be ruined, if the law were not restored which enabled the employer to compel his servants to work at such wages as he chose to give. We noticed at the time, that these complaints proceeded from shallow minds, and that the just law would ultimately prove the most beneficial. Already this prediction has been amply fulfilled. The demand for workmen last summer now turns out to have been entirely factitious, fostered by the bank-notes, and the whole manufacturing districts to have been engaged in an excessive over-production. The combination of the workmen was one of the natural checks to this erroneous proceeding; to have compelled them by force to work would have aggravated the evil; and it is a notorious fact, that those masters whose men stood longest out are now best off, for their stocks were sold off at the high prices of summer, and having been prevented laying in more, they now rejoice when their fellows mourn. Glasgow has been saved a great deal of calamity by the workmen standing out so long. The practical men should confess this, and do justice at once to the laws of the Creator and the wisdom of ministers.

We close with a last example. Leather made from hides of home-slaughter has preserved its price, and continued steadily in demand amidst an extensive fall on leather of every other description; and the reason is, that as cattle are killed for their flesh, and not for their hides, the supply of these could not, by human contrivance, be increased in proportion to the cupidity of the manufacturers, but remained nearly stationary at the rate of the natural demand. Leather made from imported hides, which, under the impulse of Acquisitiveness, were procured from every corner of the earth, is of a different quality, and cannot be substituted for the other, and the stock of it is now excessively redundant, and the price ruinously low. Whenever the human intellect supplies the check that nature affords in the home hide-trade, the results will be equally consolatory. The profits of that business, we

are told, have been regular and steady; the stock, although lowered in value by the present crisis, is comparatively little depressed, and is said to be one of the safest and steadiest branches of manufacture at present prosecuted in Britain.

ARTICLE XVII.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE PHRENOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

January 5th, 1826.—Mr Lyon read an essay on the functions of the organs of Individuality. A New Zealand skull was presented by Mr Alexander Moffat, Brown Square, Edinburgh. Mr John Burn Murdoch, advocate, was ad

mitted an ordinary member.

January 19th.-The Secretary read an essay, by Dr Kennedy of Glasgow, on the cerebral development and mental manifestations of James M'Kaen, executed at Glasgow on 25th January, 1797, for the murder and robbery of James Buchanan, the Lanark carrier. He also read the case of a mechanical genius, communicated by the Rev. Thomas Irvine, assistant minister of Lundie. Mr Law presented a mask of Mr Taylor, teacher of the harp.

February 2d.-Mr G. Combe read an essay on human responsibility as affected by Phrenology. Mr Combe was requested to print and circulate the paper among the members; and the consideration of it was adjourned till the subsequent meeting. A motion was made by Mr Combe, that the Society should invite Dr Spurzheim, who had come to reside for some time in England, to deliver a course of lectures in Edinburgh; and the president was instructed to write to Dr Spurzheim accordingly. The following donations were presented, viz.-Cast, shewing the bones of the human skull, and cast of the skull of a Greenland bear, by