1831.] REVIEW.-Jones on Wealth and Taxation. We shall not give a table of the manufactured goods and imports; but the variation of prices is there in general a half. We shall make no other remark than this,-that where rent, rates, and taxes are not reduced one half also, double the production, whether corn, stock, or goods, must be brought to market, to return the same sum as before the fall of price. Now this, besides the certain creation of a glut, may be impossible; e. g. poor land may exist not worth tillage, even rent free, because the crops may not cover the expenses; and in other cases, agricultural or manufacturing, it may not be practicable to duplicate stock, from want of capital or other causes. That the change of currency was the sole cause of this, cannot be admitted, because reduction of prices ensued three years before Mr. Peel's Bill. The fact, however, remains the same, that commodities are now not worth more than half their preceding value; and that the consequences must be diminution of the means of pecuniary expense and accumulation; and that if the quantum of consumption is lessened, that of demand and profit must be so too; nor can demand be forced but by a reduction of price, which tempts the poor: and the more these persons meddle with luxuries, the more will they come upon the poor's rates. Thus the beer shops promote the consumption of barley, and increase the malt revenue; but the poor's rates will pay the amount, directly or indirectly. So serious in consequence is this mode of legislation upon fiscal subjects so impossible is legislation, in our opinion, to be guided by the vor populi in affairs dependent upon calculation and abstract reason-that we warmly recommend the perusal of this pamphlet to all those who prefer real patriotism, to that which merely regards popularity, and does not care for acquiring it by servility. 527 term we are to include any other nation than that of an excessive population, which by competition creates a difficulty of procuring the means of subsistence, we deny the fact. The price of the funds will show at all times what is the pecuniary state of the country; and the luxury, what is its production. In war time, the 3 per cents. may sink to 50l. and lower, because the country wants to borrow more than can be supplied by lenders, either because they cannot accumulate fast enough for the demand, or because they can employ their money better elsewhere. In time of peace, the stocks rise, because capitalists crowd the market to invest money for the sake of convenience and security, though at diminished interest. Under real distress no such event could ensue as buying in at all. There is, therefore, a wide difference between National Distress and a superfluity of Distressed People, because the causes are utterly distinct. The latter, by the cheapness of their labour, and their efforts to live, may and even do produce that congestion of wealth, which utterly extinguishes want of every kind, while they may themselves not be partakers of the profits to an equal extent with the manufacturers, because he has to receive interest for that capital, to which they contribute nothing out of their own funds. For instance, let us suppose the capital of a manufacture required to be 20,000l. of which the interest ought to be ten per cent. The workmen stand, in a pecuniary view, in the same light as water-mills or machinery. They are deductions from the gross receipts, mere tools, but they come into no share of the net profits. If they did, the manufacture must be relinquished. We are not talking of moral or philanthropic motives or results, only of the operation of inevitable circumstances. We are not talking of the fact, whether people can or cannot be maintained out of the quantum of production in this or that way. We only know that when they do not repay capital, they become dead weight (as it is called) in reference to national wealth. A consumer who merely produces no more than what he uses, is like an infant dependent on the mother; but as soon as a cultivator is able to create more than is necessary for his subsistence, he is enabled to pay a tribute; 528 hence the origin of rent;" a position to be remembered, because, says our author, REVIEW.-Jones on Wealth and Taxation. "There are certain visionary notions, as to the origin of rent, which rest upon an assumption that it is never the immediate result of cultivation; and that while any land remains unoccupied, no rent will be paid for the cultivated part, except such as is warranted by its superiority over that part, which is supposed to be always open to the industry of the community."-p. 10. Now the history of this hypothesis is simply that common will continue to be common until it is cultivated; and it is in character with political economy, viz. to mystify obvious things. Every man knows that he must bring land into an improved state capable of producing a profit, before he can derive profit from it, or rent in consequence of its bearing a profit. To correct the error to which Mr. Jones has alluded, he states the various forms of rent. Of these his certain leading points, we shall take notice. We wish only that he had premised a brief account of the Nomadic or Pastoral æra, when flocks and herds were only kept, for it was in consequence of their increase, and that of the human species also, that it was found impossible to reconcile the grazing room for the one, and a sufficient support for the other, that tillage commenced. This, suggested by the peculiar situation of Egypt, only began in Palestine with the Israelitish colonization of Joshua. But to Mr. Jones's account. In the early history of nations, it appears that the Sovereign is the sole land proprietor; and that he distributes proportions to his nobles, who again subdivide them in allotments to culti rent in the form of servators, who pay vices and labour upon the lord's demesnes. These grants were resumable by the Crown, and thus laid the foundation of a dependence which made the Sovereign the centre of power, and gave birth to the feudal system. See b. i. ch. i. § 1. Of the origin or secondary farmer's rents, Mr. Jones writes, [June, food, implements, and materials, as enable them to feed and employ others, to take the results of their labour, and to exchange them again for more food, and all that is necessary to continue the process."—p. 12. "Much time seldom elapses after the formation of an agricultural community, before some imperfect separation takes place between the departments of labour. The body of artizans and mechanics bear at first a very small proportion to the whole number of the people; some of these soon become able to store up such a quantity of Just as this is, it appears that in this country money was so dear, and commodities so cheap, that it was impossible to obtain, till about the reign of John, and then but partially, pecuniary payments. Meadow land was then worth 2s. an acre, i. e. twenty times less than its present value; and therefore money was in the same proportion more valuable. We conceive that it would not have been possible to establish money rents, unless the amplification of the medium of exchange had lent its powerful aid, because by becoming cheaper, it raised the prices of commodities also, and that circumstance again cheapens labour; for however there may be a nominal increase in wages, it will be found that it did not command an equal portion of commodities. The political consequences of good agriculture Mr. Jones luminously exhibits. He states, that it produces a larger number of non-agricultural classes, and that an efficient introduction of democratic elements depends almost entirely upon the numbers and property of these classes.—pp. 160, 161. Mr. Jones treats with his usual skill the moral havoc introduced by the Poor Laws. He says very truly, "The honesty of the labourers, their self-respect, their value for their character as workmen, all hope of bettering their condition in life by good conduct, industry, and prudence; their sense of their mutual duties and claims, as parents and children; all feelings and habits, in short, that contribute to make men good citizens and good men, have been undermined and impaired, or utterly destroyed.”—p. 317. In remedy of such a system he proposes the plan of allotments, and says, that if the plan be regulated and executed "Under the guidance of sound views, and with reasonable precautions, it need not be feared that the many good effects of such a plan would be marred by the results of the principle of population, or be neutralized by any train of accompanying evils."-p.318. We have touched upon this subject in our notice of Mr. Montague Burgoyne's pamphlet. Mr. Jones has not noticed the great 1831.] changes produced by the annihilation of small farms. Here we must conclude. The book is one of those which will be duly appreciated by those who know the fallacies which have been published on the subject, viz. such as these: "Rent depends exclusively on the extension of tillage. It is high where tillage is widely extended over inferior lands, and low where it is confined to the superior descriptions." Now as much will be given for the use of land, as can be made by it, and (convenience excepted), the quality of the soil regulates the rent. As to arable land, the sheep and turnip husbandry has been the main agent of increasing the produce, and of course the rent. REVIEW.-Bowles's Life of Bishop Ken. In short, Mr. Jones's book is one which advises us, with regard to political economists, to open our eyes and shut our ears." 66 ני The Life of Thomas Ken, D. D. deprived Bishop of Bath and Wells; seen in connection with the Spirit of the Times, political and religious, particularly those great Events, the Restoration, 1660, and the Revolution of 1688, including the Period of fanatical Puritanism from 1640 to the death of Cromwell. By the Rev. W. L. Bowles, Canon Residentiary of Salisbury, M.A. M.R.S.L. Vol. 11. pp. 309. THE beau ideal of the clerical character with the people at large is that of a clock (a term applied to Burn, the ecclesiastical lawyer), without feelings, talents, or passions. We who affect to be philosophers, do not estimate character by negative innocence, but by positive excellence. We value more the founders of schools, colleges, and hospitals, than we do the imilatores Christi (as they call themselves) ascribed to Thomas a Kempis. We prefer the neglected Archdeacon Daubeny, with his reformed village and almshouses, to the lauded passive Fenelon. Now, if we look to nine out of ten of our best institutions, we shall find that they owed their origin to the professional excellence of the Hierarchy-to BISHOPS. The disposition of church preferment (a wise disposition, says Adam Smith,) by private patronage, occasions men to be admitted into holy orders by arbitrary legal necessity; and the unprofessional worldliness of these gentlemen is adverse to the beau ideal of the order. GENT. MAG. June, 1831. ช 529 interest a prac There remains also another evil behind. The usual disposition of church property leaves worthy men without through life, and, in our judgment, to struggle with poverty without any necessity for the exist ence of such an evil. Were it tice, as has been actually done by living Bishops, that no ungraduated man should hold a valuable curacy in an English diocese ; and that a per centage salary, as was the proposition of Bishop Porteus and Lord Stowell, should be paid to curates of the larger livings, provided that they were past the age of forty, aud no curates should be eligible for such situations until they reached that age; we hope and would fain believe that there would then exist no such feelings as now irritate the public. It is true that the public has no sort of concern with church property, because it never is, was, or can be, a tax upon the public (being only a rent charge by private benefactors); but nevertheless it is a trust, not a private property otherwise than in the patronage; and, like all trust concerns, is amenable, not as to the extinction, but to the regulation, to the Legislature of the realm. An eminent Senator himconfesses that no establishment can be self (not friendly to the institution) formed so cheap to the public, as that of the Church of England; for this obvious reason, that Tithes, if abolished, would only devolve to the landlord, who would have thirty shillings instead of the twenty now paid to the parson. If, as Dr. Johnson says, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, it is not to be denied that some agitators instigate felony. There are such men; men who are reckless (consequentially) of murder itself, by sedition and rebellion, in the pursuit of their selfish advantage. The indigent, having nothing to lose, are rerum novarum avidi, because they may in the scramble get something. But how favourable is such a feeling to the dissolution of civilization, to the substitution of folly and passion for wisdom and prudence? Mr. Bowles opens his work with an Introduction to this effect. He states that there are miscreants who misnomer the institutions of public schools, colleges, and so forth, founded by the private benefactions of individuals for public good, by calling them public property, seizable, convertible and re 530 REVIEW. Bowles's Life of Bishop Ken. [June, sumable at option by Government,— a allude, what Hawkins has said has been of public good, than trash which only makes men conceited or foolish, and is in other respects pernicious. But the Bishops have good incomes; what then? If they were taken away from them, would not they go to others, who would not have the same obligations to do equal good with them? What benefit to the public can there possibly ensue from commutations like these? Bishop Ken was an apostolic character formed in a mould by nature for a Bishop; and many such persons have been, and are still, upon the episeopal bench. Bishop Ken, like his holy Master, cared nothing for money. He was a philosopher ecclesiastic; and was such a prelate as Socrates would probably have been; and he became a victim, as men who are too highminded to temporize have often been. The incidents in his life Mr. Bowles has illustrated with curious anecdotes and instructive observations, which, as given by a writer of so much taste and talent, render the work highly interesting, and effective of its great object, a vindication of clerical character, equally removed from Popery and Puritanism. The table-talk manner adopted, and secularity of the historical and biographical matter, also removes the book from the sermon shelf, and thus circulates more widely its valuable contents. Our space does not allow us to give at present more than the following specimen. It relates to a singular and affecting incident, obscurely alluded to by Ken's early biographer Hawkins, and tending to explain the aversion entertained by King William towards the Christian prelate: Respecting the transaction to which I copied, with all its obscurity, into every other account of Ken's life. It is as follows: He (Ken) was some time after this made chaplain to the Princess of Orange, who was at that time residing in Holland; in which post his most prudent behaviour and strict piety gave him entire credit and high esteem with that Princess; but a consequential act of his singular zeal for the honour of his country, in behalf of a young lady, so far exasperated the Prince, that he warmly threatened to turn him from the service; which the Doctor resisting, and begging leave of the Princess (whom to his death he distinguished by the title of his mistress), warned himself from the service, till, by the entreaty of the Prince himself, he was courted to his former post and respect; and when the year expired, he returned to Eng land. This was not unknown to the King, nor did he show the least dislike to his behaviour. "To show the origin of this remarkable transaction, we must revert to some prior historical circumstances. In the year 1677, the Prince of Orauge came to England, to solicit in person a marriage with Mary. With the Prince, at this time of the age of twenty, came over his half-uncle Count Zalenstein. He was a kind of military Mentor at this time to Willian, his nephew; and when his disciple was impressed with the charms of the youthful Mary, Mentor himself became no less suddenly enamoured of one of the young ladies who attended Mary in the character of maid of honour from England. But who was the young lady? for Ken mentioned no name, either of the one or the other. "The young lady was Jane, daughter and heir of Sir Henry Wroth, of Durants, Enfield, in the county of Middlesex, descended, on the mother's side, from the 'noble Sidney,' she being the eldest daughter of Robert Earl of Leicester. "My ideas were unexpectedly confirmed by a passage in a note of Lord Dartmouth, in Burnet's History, where the name is accidentally mentioned; Ken,' says Lord Dartmouth, had been chaplain to the Princess of Orange, but sent back on some disgust the Prince took to him, for the marriage of Zulenstein with Mrs. Wroth,' &c. Jane Wroth was this injured young lady. An English lady of birth, and honour rable rank, no chevalier in the court of the Prince of Orange need have disdained; and it is no wonder, both from Christian principles as a minister, and from kind and virtuous feelings as an Englishman, that Ken became interested, when the affections of Jane Wroth, under the sacred and solemn *Mr. Bowles is slightly incorrect in his genealogy. Jane Wroth was not an heiress; and it was her grandmother who was Lady Mary Sydney. (Lysous's Environs, ii. 317). 1831.] REVIEW.-Archæologia, vol. XXIII. pledge of plighted troth, were won by a soldier of thirty-five, so near in relationship to the cold and haughty William of Orange. Ken, in utter disregard of any consequences to himself, appeared the sole friend of a destitute woman, who would otherwise have been an outcast, but who, by the remonstrance of the Princess's Chaplain, became the honoured wife of Zulenstein, afterwards Lord Rochford, by whom he had four sons and four daughters. "But the indignity done to high Dutch pride, by a private English lady marrying the uncle of the Prince of Orange, was by him never forgiven. This was the secret ground of William's personal aversion to Ken, and Ken's moral dislike of William, besides his political principles." Archæologia. Vol. XXIII. Second Part. pp. 129-456. THE second part of the 23d volume opens with a translation, by Lord DudHey Stuart, of a paper by the Prince of Canino, concerning certain Etruscan Vases, many in number, found upon his estate in Italy. It is accompanied with a disquisition relative to the state of the arts prevalent in Etruria before the Roman epoch. Here there is a neglect of history. It is well known that the founders of Rome were a banditti of ferocious adventurers; and that the Etruscan Numa was a Sovereign purposely appointed to succeed Romulus, that he might civilize the barbarous colony; and that whatever arts Rome possessed before the conquest of Greece were, as presumed and denominated, Etruscan. The truth is, that there were no arts whatever of manufacture which did not originate in the East; and that men become Robinson Crusoes or South-Sea mechanics long before they become men of science. Necessity creates the one, but the other is the product of leisure, resulting from support without labour. It is well known to philosophers, that Greece or Asia would never have excelled in the elegant arts, if the drudgery essential to provision for the wants of the day, had not been consigned to slaves. As to the execution of the paintings on vases, the excellence itself proves the existence of a state of society beyond the hunting and nomadic æras. No vases of earthenware are found in the South-Sea Islands. If these vases are to be deemed of Etruscan invention, the notion is unfounded. The first inhabitants of Italy known' were the 531 Celts, of whom there was a tribe called Umbri, who were dispossessed of no fewer than three hundred towns by the Etruscans. So Pliny.* But geo graphical discussions do not precisely bear upon the question. It plainly appears from Herodotus, that Tarentum in Italy was a most ancient port, and that merchants carried there the most precious commodities of Sidon and Phenicia,† as they did to Spain, Gaul, and Britain. Tarentum was an eminent emporium of manufacture, for Pliny informs us that Egina only worked the superficies of Candelabra, but Tarentum the shafts. The Celts came from the banks of the Danube, and we shall not enter into Pliny's discussion of the connection of that river with the Adriatic.§ As to the Etruscans, it is stated by Count Caylus, that no ancient historians mention their origin, for they were only a tribe of a nation, ultimately the most powerful tribe both by sea and land, enriched by commerce, afterwards enervated by luxury, and subdued by the Gauls and Ro mans, after continual wars for two centuries. The allegorical and hiero. glyphical figures, such as griffins, sphinxes, winged lions, inscriptions on statues, and the cold attitudes of their figures, which appear swathed, resemble the Egyptian manner. He rodotus informs us that there was the closest connection between the Phenicians and Etruscans; that both nations were famous for winged deities; that Homer calls the Sidonians great artists; and that the arts flourished among them long before the Trojan war.All these circumstances are sufficient to show the origin of Etruscan art, as it is called, though of date anterior to those victories which brought them into notice.-The Phenicians are said to have first invented an alphabet; and in p. 255 we find the name of the maker of a vase, in Cadmean characters, (rather than Pelasgian, as the Prince of Canino says,) and on the inner rim is an inscription of such a similarity to the demotic or enchorial Egyptian characters, as to imply the connection between the two countries before mentioned. This assimilation the Prince admits, but he does not add that the characters belong only |