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NOTE 42. Page 160.

"An inversion of the same formula."- Such an inversion, the reader may fancy, might escape a clever man's eye for itself, but hardly when pursued to its consequences. Mr. Malthus, however, has persisted in this blunder, even where it was so pursued, and where it deeply affected the inference; viz. during his long attempt to overthrow Ricardo's doctrine of value. He refuses to see, nay, he positively denies, that if two men (never more, never less) produce a variable result of ten and five, then in one case each unit of the result has cost double the labor which it has cost in the other. On the contrary, because there are always two men, Mr. M. obstinately insists that the cost in labor is constant.

NOTE 43. Page 174.

In reality, the disposition to the engrossment, by large capitalists, of many farms, or of many cotton-mills, which is often complained of injudiciously as a morbid phenomenon in our modern tendencies, is partly to be regarded as an antagonist tendency, meeting and combating that other tendency irregularly manifested towards a subdivision too minute in the ordinary callings of trade. The efforts con

tinually made to intrude upon the system of a town, or a quarter, by interpolating an extra baker, grocer, or druggist, naturally reacts, by irritating the counter tendency to absorb into one hand many separate mills, &c., or to blend into one function many separate trades. In Scotland, for instance, grocers are also wine-dealers, spirit-dealers, cheesemongers, oilmen.

NOTE 44. Page 183.

"But not until the downward tendency of interest," &c.— And, on the other hand, by parity of reason, if, 1. through draining; 2. guano; 3. bone-dust; 4. spade culture, &c., the agriculturists of this country should (as probably they will if not disturbed by corn traitors), through the known antagonist movement to that of rent, translate the land of England within the next century to a higher key, so that No. 250 were to become equal in power with the present No. 210,- and so regressively, No. 40 equal with the present No. 1, in that case all functions of capital (wages, rent, profit) would rise gradually and concurrently, though not equally. Through the known nexus between landed capital and all other capital, it would follow that all manufacturing capital (wages and profit) must rise; since, after all,

however far removed by its quality or its habits from agricultural industry, not the less the very ultimate refinements of industry in the arts or manufactures must still come back to the land for its main demand, viz. of beef, mutton, butter, cheese, milk, bread, hides, barks, tallow, flax, &c.; even for the haughty artist of cities, the coarse rural industry must be the final vis regulatrix. This being so, it follows, that under an advance in our agriculture, such as even the next generation will probably secure (through the growing combination of science and enormous capital), profits must rise in their rate, and therefore interest. Consequently, it will not then answer to the government, under the legal par of the English funds, to borrow for the sake of paying off any stock whatever. They will not be able to obtain money on any terms that could offer a temptation for paying off a 3 per cent stock.

NOTE 45. Page 185.

This circumstantiality is requisite, because there is another Monsieur Say in the market, of whom (being dead I believe) it may now be said, without offence, in the words of an ancient Joe Millerism, that if he is a counsellor also, he is not a counsellor likewise.

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NOTE 46. Page 189.

These courts for insolvencies, as well as for bankruptcies, present many openings for discovery to the political economist. In. the course of this very examination, another truth came out which may serve to convince the "knowing" men upon town, that they are not always so knowing as they think themselves. What notion is more popular amongst the prudential masters of life, than the hollow pretensions of cheap shops, and the mere impossibility that they should have any power to offer "bargains?" Now, few people are more disposed to that opinion, as generally sound, than myself. To see "tickets or "labels" indicating prices below the standard, is for every man of sense a caution against that establishment. Yet still the possible exceptions are not few. In this instance, it was proved beyond a doubt, that for many months the bankrupt had gone upon the principle of raising money, for his own instant uses, by selling the Parisian goods below the original cost of the manufacturer. Such dishonorable practices certainly soon exhaust their own principle of movement. But, in so vast a community as London, always there must be new cases arising; consequently, always there must be some limited possibility of real bargains.

LIFE OF MILTON.

PREFATORY MEMORANDA.

1. THIS sketch of Milton's life was written1 to meet the hasty demand of a powerful association (then in full activity) for organizing a systematic movement towards the improvement of popular reading. The limitations, as regarded space, which this association found itself obliged to impose, put an end to all hopes that any opening could be found in this case for an improved life as regarded research into the facts, and the true interpretation of facts. These, though often scandalously false, scandalously misconstructed even where true in the letter of the narrative, and read by generations of biographers in an odious spirit of malignity to Milton, it was nevertheless a mere necessity, silently and acquiescingly, to adopt in a case where any noticeable change would call for a justification, and any adequate justification would call for much ampler space. Under these circumstances, finding myself cut off from one mode of service to the suffering reputation of this greatest among men, it occurred, naturally, that I might imperfectly compensate that defect by service of the same character applied in a different direction. Facts, falsely stated or maliciously colored, require, too frequently, elaborate details for their exposure: but transient opinions, or solemn judgments, or insinuations dexterously applied to openings made by vagueness of statement or laxity of language, it is possible oftentimes to face and dissipate instan

taneously by a single word of seasonable distinction, or by a simple rectification of the logic. Sometimes a solitary whisper, suggesting a fact that had been overlooked, or a logical relation that had been wilfully darkened, is found sufficient for the triumphant overthrow of a scoff that has corroded Milton's memory for three generations. Accident prevented me from doing much even in this line for the exposure of Milton's injuries: hereafter I hope to do more; but in the mean time I call the reader's attention to one such rectification applied by myself to the effectual prostration of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the worst enemy that Milton and his great cause have ever been called on to confront; the worst as regards undying malice, — in which qualification for mischief Dr. Johnson was not at all behind the diabolical Lauder or the maniacal Curran; and the foremost by many degrees in talents and opportunities for giving effect to his malice. I will here expand the several steps in the process of the case, so that the least attentive of readers, or least logical, may understand in what mode and in what degree Dr. Johnson, hunting for a triumph, allowed himself to trespass across the frontiers of calumny and falsehood, and at the same time may understand how far my own exposure smashes the Doctor's attempt in the shell.

Dr. Johnson is pursuing the narrative of Milton's travels in Italy; and he has arrived at that point where Milton, then in the south of that peninsula, and designing to go forward into Greece, Egypt, and Syria, is suddenly arrested by great tidings from England: so great, indeed, that in Milton's ear, who well knew to what issue the public disputes were tending, these tidings must have sounded revolutionary. The king was preparing a second military expedition against Scotland; that is against Scotland as the bulwark of an odious anti-episcopal church. It was notorious that the English aristocracy by a very large section, and much of the English nation upon motives variously combined, some on religious grounds, some on political, could not be relied on for any effectual support in a war having such objects, and opening so many occasions for diverting the national arms to popular purposes. It was pretty well known also, that dreadful pecuniary embarrassments would

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at last compel the king to summon, in right earnest, such a Parliament as would no longer be manageable, but would in the very first week of its meeting find a security against a sudden dissolution. Using its present advantages prudently, any Parliament would now bring the king virtually upon his knees: and the issue must be ample concession on the king's part to claimants now become national, or else Revolution and Civil War. At such a time, and with such prospects, what honest · patriot could have endured to absent himself, and under no more substantial excuse than a transient gratification to his classical and archæological tastes ? tastes liberal and honorable beyond a doubt, but not of a rank to interfere with more solemn duties. This change in his prospects, and consequently in his duties, was painful enough, we may be sure, to Milton: but with his principles, and his deep self-denying sense of duty, there seems no room for question or hesitation: and already at this point, before they go a step further, all readers capable of measuring the disappointment, or of appreciating the temper in which such a self-conquest must have been achieved, will sympathize heroically with Milton's victorious resistance to a temptation so specially framed as a snare for him, and at the same time will sympathize fraternally with Milton's bitter suffering of selfsacrifice as to all that formed the sting of that temptation. Such is the spirit in which many a noble heart, that may be far from approving Milton's politics, will read this secret Miltonic struggle more than two hundred years after all is over. Such is not the spirit (as we shall now see) in which it has been read by falsehood and malice.

2. But before coming to that, there is a sort of parenthesis of introduction. Dr. Johnson summons us all not to suffer any veneration for Milton to intercept our merriment at what, according to his version of the story, Milton is now doing. I therefore, on my part, call on the reader to observe, that in Dr. Johnson's opinion, if a great man, the glory of his race, should happen through human frailty to suffer a momentary eclipse of his grandeur, the proper and becoming utterance of our impressions as to such a collapse would not be by silence and sadness, but by vulgar yells of merriment. The Doctor is anxious that

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