ly in dividends £7,000,000 to the government creditors. This money is drawn from every quarter of the kingdom, placed on deposit, and immediately disbursed to the creditors. This movement embraces the leading features of the Sub-Treasury of the United States, and has been adopted by the government of Great Britain avowedly to prevent undue Bank expansions, by which consequent revulsions and general distress are inevitably engendered. The government of Great Britain having thus approximated the example set by that of the United States in relation to the national finances, it becomes urgent upon Congress to restore and perfect that scheme of finance which was in hot haste condemned before its excellencies could be developed or its organization completed. There is no fear that when once it has become appreciated by the public, that it will ever again be disturbed; when it has imparted that steadiness and regularity to money affairs which it is its nature to confer, the commercial public will never again permit a recurrence to the vassalage of bank monopolies. The finances of the federal government are in a condition which evinces the fact that the present tariff is more of a protective than of a revenue nature. The revenues of the year ending June 30, 1845, are near $5,000,000 below the estimates of the department based upon the actual business of the year 1844, and the first four months of the fiscal year 1845. That is to say, the trade of the country, for the last eight months of 1845, disappointed the expectations of the Secretary, calculated on the best information within his reach, by about twenty-five per cent. Such an extraordinary error in the official estimates points to something radically wrong in the principles on which they were based. This is the more apparent when we consider the general state of the business of the country in its relations with the commercial countries of Europe. The exports of the U. States during the summer of 1844, were moderate in quantity, at low and falling prices, and at that time the imports of goods and the revenue of the government were the largest. During the last three quarters of the fiscal year 1845, the exports of U. States produce were large and increasing, at firm and rising prices abroad, giving large proceeds to be returned to this country in the shape of goods, yet notwithstanding this, the revenue of the government has been declining, and the average rate of duty upon the amount of dutiable goods becoming less, showing that the import of those goods on which the highest ad valorem rates are chargeable, and on which the greatest losses were sustained last year, has been avoided as being prohibited. The general account of trade is therefore reduced, and the revenues of the govern- ́ ment have suffered to an extent which brings them below the expenses, a state of things that involves an accumulation of debt on the one hand, or direct taxation on the other. In short, the finances of the federal treasury resemble very much in their present position those of Great Britain in 1842, when the present ministry totally reversed the commercial policy of that government, and raised its income by reducing taxes. At that time the revenues had for several years been annually deficit, and Mr. Baring attempted to make good the deficit, by adding five per cent. to all existing taxes. That addition failed to increase the income; on the other hand, it diminished it on many articles. The necessary result of these high taxes, was the income tax imposed by the new government to meet a present emergency, while a reduction of twenty per cent. in corn duties and in the tariff generally provided for a future increase in the revenue, which has since been realized. When the old ministry went out of power, they were in favor of a fixed duty of 4s. a 6s. upon foreign corn. The new ministers reduced the protective feature of the sliding scale twenty per cent., and on occasion of a debate on the corn law, which took place June 10, the late ministers, now the opposition, voted in favor of entire free trade in corn, having receded from the fixed duty. On the same occasion, Sir James Graham, one of the ministers, repudiated the doctrine of protection entirely. He was followed by the Premier, who expressed himself as follows: "I have attempted to show, therefore, that during the three or four years which fice, they have altered the law (corn law) the present government have been in ofconsistently with sound principles, and not only this law, but other laws which prohibited the importation of foreign pro duce. In no respect upon any article have they increased protection. You think they have not carried the principle far enough, but at any rate every act they have done has been an act tending to es tablish, with respect to the import of every foreign article, the principle which I believe to be a sound one, the gradual abatement of purely protective duties (hear)." These expressions of opinion from both ministers and the opposition in favor of free trade, and against the principles of protection as injurious to the state which puts them in practice, produced a sensation the most profound throughout the kingdom. These are unequivocal signs of the speedy down fall of special privileges as far as conferred by unjust commercial legislation. It is also remarkable that we find in England all classes, even those which have heretofore enjoyed the miscalled protection, assenting to the truth of the principles announced by the minister. They have learned by hard experience that the welfare of the whole is the welfare of each component part of the body politic. We have then the experience of our own treasury, under the operation of a protective tariff, and the precept and example of England, all demonstrating the absurdity of attempting to legislate for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. OUR REPRESENTATIVES ABROAD. MR. LESTER. LOOKING Over some of the works of art Mr. Lester has brought with him on his return from Europe, for a short visit, we have been led to reflect on the character of our foreign officers of government. Among the many we send abroad, how few take any interest in our national literature, or add anything to its wealth. The removal of a tariff on a single article of exportation will engage all their efforts, while the manner in which they can add to the intellectual stores of the nation they represent, seems never to have entered their minds. There are, it is true, honorable exceptions to this statement. Among them we notice such men as Wheaton, Irving, and the two Everetts: But from the Mediterranean, where the heart of the world once beat, what have we hitherto learned? In the first place our commerce to that sea has steadily declined, while scarcely a ray of light has come to us from our representatives there. And yet, as Johnson once said to some one who spoke disparagingly of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, "The Mediterranean, Sir, is the cradle of civilisation." And so it is. Beginning from Palestine and Egypt on the east, and coming along by Greece, where the first republics rose and fell, and art and poetry and literature grew almost to perfection, we at length reach Rome, whose ruins are greater than all modern works, and whose very corpse is more awful than any living nation. And yet from these great landmarks in human history, where more lies buried, and yet to be dug up, than the civilized world will create for the next century, what do we hear? Going north, we come to Florence, and here begin to tread on ancient republican soil, where we ought to learn much that should instruct us in the science of true government. To say nothing of the glorious republics of the north of Italy, and the amount of knowledge to be gained from the ancient records of those times, here lived and died Americus Vespucius, who first set foot on our continent, and whose name we bear. Yet, who has ever taken an interest in the early history of this man, or endeavored to come at early manuscripts, which doubtless are in existence, concerning his first voyages to the New world. So ignorant were our government even of this family, every branch of which it should have known, that it came within three votes, we believe, of granting a million of acres to a womanthe most notorious mistress of Europeas the only lineal descendant of the great navigator. Mr. Lester was the first Åmerican that ever called on that family at Florence, now reduced to extreme pover. ty. A little more, and our government would have bestowed a large teritory on a worthless woman, who has been exiled from her own country; and passed by in neglect the only worthy descendants of the man it wished to honor. Mr. Lester informs us that two daughters of this ancient family support themselves by teaching school, while the only lineal male descendant receives about seventy dollars a year from the government for some minor office under it. So affected were these children of that illustrious man by this attention on the part of a consul of the United States, that they forced on him the only original portrait of Americus Vespucius in Italy. Through all their poverty they had clung to the portrait of the founder of their family. Money could not purchase it from them, but the sympathy and kindness of a single American could influence them to urge it on his acceptance. This portrait is accompanied by a private letter from the Grand Duke of Tuscany to Mr. Lester. It is not often a valuable painting comes within our reach, and our gov ernment should not fail to purchase it at a liberal sum, and we are sure Mr. Lester, who can dispose of it as he pleases, would give the family cause for lasting gratitude. If our public men wish to know how difficult it is to get hold of such a picture, even in countries where they have not the same inducements to preserve them as we, let them go to Madrid, where, we understand, is another original portrait of Vespucius, and try to purchase it. It would be a large sum that should lift that picture from the place where it hangs. We trust, and we believe, that our government will never permit Mr. Lester to carry this portrait back to Italy. Going still further north, along the Mediterranean, we come to the ancient republic of Genoa, and the native place of Columbus, the discoverer of the continent we inhabit. The early history of this wonderful man is wholly unknown; and yet, we believe there are papers, could they be obtained, that would give us all we wish to know of him. Mr. Lester is the first man who has been able to get hold of anything throwing light upon this period of Columbus's life. We understand he has got hold of some facts of great interest which he intends soon to publish. These two things alone, which we have mentioned, make the three years' residence of Mr. Lester abroad of great value to our country, and should cause our Executive not to lose sight of so indefatigable a searcher into the literature of the countries where he is placed. But he has not only brought information to us from Italy, but carried it to Italy from us. Having with great labor obtained a translation of Bancroft's history into Italian, he prefaced it with a biography of the author, and then endeavored to get it through the censors of the press in Sar dinia. He even besought the king to allow it to pass, and obtained his promise; but his ministers, by their representations, prevailed over him, and the whole thing was quashed. Said they, "this history does honor to your country, and the principles in which your government is founded, but they cannot be allowed to spread here, as they would destroy our peace, and endanger society." Determined that so important a work should be circulated in Italy, Mr. Lester went to Tuscany, and there obtained the promise of the Grand Duke's librarian, and of his editor Alfieri, the discoverer and appointed publisher of Galileo's manuscripts, that it should be issued forthwith. The effect of the circulation of such a work in Italy will be deeply felt by the petty despots, that now hang like a millstone around its neck. A part of Mr. Lester's anxiety to circulate this work grows out of his strong Democratic feelings. He himself feels and writes for the masses. His two works, "Glory and Shame," and "Condition and Fate of England," which are now being translated in Italian, show his strong sympathy for the mass against the privileged few. He believes in the largest liberty to the many, and his writings have tended in no small degree to spread this feeling abroad. We know of no author who is capable of writing for the masses than he, more efficiently than he. He is like Kean, who once asked his wife on his return from the theatre, how he had performed his part. "Oh. well," said she; I saw the Duke of clap you." "D-n the Duke," he replied, "the pit rose at me." Mr. Lester seems to have about the same feeling towards the critic and scholar, and the same love for the approbation of what is termed the lower classes. He has not been idle in a foreign country, but brings back with him several manuscript works. Among others, a translation of "Il Citodino di Republica, or the Citizen of the Republic," written by a Doge of the Genoese Republic, 250 years ago. He has also completed a plan of reform in our consular system, which he is to submit to the government, and which we hope, for our own credit, will in some form or other be adopted. His Citodino di Republica is a wonderful treatise on the duties of a Repub lican citizen, and shows what clear views were entertained two centuries ago of the rights of man. Mr. Lester has also writ ten much on art, and obtained from Mr. Powers an account of his early lifestruggles, feelings, views of sculpture and art generally, which cannot but be interesting to every American. Vie hope Mr. Lester will not abandon his post, for he is the only consul we have in Italy, with the exception of the one in Rome, who preserves outwardly anything of the dignity becoming a representative of the American Government. We speak thus not in blame of our consuls, but our niggardly government, which compels them to starve in their offices. No American travels through Italy without hanging his head in mortification at the slovenly appearance of our consulates beside those of all other governments. Mr. Lester has maintained the respectability of his office, and entertained his countrymen with the most unbounded liberality, though he has been compelled to do it at his own expense. His office is worth about $400 If our government cannot do better than this, let them abolish the consular system in Italy altogether withdraw our commerce from the Mediterranean, and keep only those consulates they are wil ling at least to pay the necessary ex pense of. D. Matthew's Poems: NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. We take the following article from the last number of Tait's Edinburgh Magazine-a journal which has more of the spirit and sympathies which should characterise an American Literature than most of the English periodicals. It is a handsome tribute to Mr. Matthews as a writer, especially in its appreciation of the leading ideas, not only developed in the Poems, but which run through all his writings. The general remarks on American Literature are worth listening to: 46 AMERICAN POETRY. "This is a slight book in its exterior form, and the frame-work of the intention of it is slighter still. The American writer, Mr. Cornelius Matthews, is the secretary of the Author's Copy-right Protection Club in New York; and is known in his own country by the Motley Book,'Puffer Hopkins,' and humorous prose works of the like order, indicating a quick eye and a ready philosophy in the mind that waits on it; generous sympathies towards humanity in the mass, and a very distinct and characteristic nationality. He has written also a powerful fiction called Behemoth.' The small volume before us consists of poems; and both for their quilities and defects, they are to be accounted worthy of some respectful attention. To render clearer the thought which is in us, we pass to general considerations. The contrast between the idea of what American poetry should be, and what it is, is as plain as the Mississippi on the map. The fact of the contrast faces us. With abundant flow and facility, the great body of American verse has little distinct character of any kind, and still less national character. There is little in it akin to the mountains and rivers, the prairies and characters among which is arises. This sound from the forest is not of them. It is as if a German bullfinich, escaped from the teacher's finger into the depth of the pines, sate singing his fragments of Mozart in learned modulation, upon a rocking, snowy branch. And we find ourselves wondering how, in the great country of America, where the glory of liberty is so well comprehended, and where nature rolls out her waters and lifts her hills, as in attestation of a principle worthy of her beauty-the poetry alone should persist in being lifeless, flat, and imitative, as the verse of a courtrhymer, when he rests from the bow of office among the fens of Essex. It is easier to set this down as a fact (and the American critics themselves set it down as a fact), than to define the causes of it. And the fact of the defective nationality of the literature of a young country, suggests the analogy of another fact-the defective individuality attributable to many a young writer: and the likeness may be closer than the mere analogy expresses. Nationality is individuality under the social and local aspect; and the nationality of a country's literature is the individuality of the writers of it in the aggregate. It is curious to observe that the wild oats,' sown in literature by the youthful author, as by the youthful nation, is, generally speaking, as barely tame as any stubble of the fields. Perhaps there is a bustling practicalness in both cases, which hinders that inner process of development necessary to the ulterior expression. Perhaps the mind, whether of the nation or of the man, must stand, before the cream rises. However this may be, we have given utterance to no novel form of opinion on the subject of "Poems on Man in his various aspects under the American Republic," by Cornelius Matthews, New York. American poetry in the mass. And let more inclined than the critic), upon no one mistake that opinion. We do not these extracts-however he may be forget-how should we ?-such noble struck by the involutions and obscurities names as Longfellow's may nobly lead, which to some extent disfigured themas Whittier's may add honor to; we be- he will be yet free to admit that the revelieve in the beautiful prophecy of beauty rence for truth, the exultation in right, contained in the poems of Lowell. But the good hope in human nature, which in speaking of these poets, we do not are the characteristics of this little book, speak of poetry in the gross; and in speak- and that the images of beauty which mining even of some of these, the English gle with the expression of its lofty senticritic feels, unawares, that he would fain ment-are not calculated, when taken clasp the hand of an American poet, with together to disturb the vision, and prostronger muscles in it, and less softened phecy of such among us as are looking at by the bath. Under which impression this hour towards America, as the future we are all the readier, let our readers land of freemen in all senses, and of understand, to meet the hand of Mr. poets in the highest of all." Matthews, while it presents to us the slender volume called Poems on Man, in his various aspects under the American Republic.' The volume is dedicated to the hopeful friends of humanity, by their servant, the author.' It consists of short poems in various metres, and with no connecting link associated in the reader's mind-descriptive, as the title indicates, of the different ages and conditions of men in the republic; and remarkable, as we have hinted, for their very defects. For the poems are defective precisely in that with which the verse-literature of the country overflows-we mean grace and facility. They are not graceful, but they are strong. They give no proof of remarkable facility in composition; and we are tempted sometimes to think of the writer, that he is versed better in sympathy and aspirations than in rythms and rhymes. His verses are occasionally incorrect, and are frequently ragged and hard. His ear is not tuned to fine uses,' and his hand refuses to flatter unduly the ear of his audience. But he writes not only like a man,' but like a republican and American. Under this rough bark is a heart of oak; and peradventure a noble vessel, if not a Dodonaean oracle, may presently be had out of it. The wood has a good grain, the timber is of large size; and if gnarled and knotted, these are the conditions of strength, and perhaps the convulsions of growth; it is thus that strong trees grow, while slim grasses spring smoothly from the ground. And the thoughtful student of the literature of America will pause naturally and musingly at the sight of this little book, and mark it as something new and strange,' considering the circumstances of the soil." After quoting from the poems of the Child, the Citizen, the Merchant and the Reformer, passages which have already appeared in this Review, the Journal concludes: "However the reader may be inclined to be critical (and perhaps he will be No. The Indicator. By Leigh Hunt. XIV. of Wiley and Putman's Library of Choice Reading. If it was sheer envy that branded Socrates with atheism, what was that which stigmatized Leigh Hunt as the head of the Cockney school? Are cockneys the disciples and apostles of Nature? If the first of the sect said the "cock nighs,” how different must the last and greatest be from this "illustrious predecessor !" To him this "neigh" would be a "clarion," or a "call to prayer;" and the homely bird would he hallowed and made radiant by thronging poetic memoires. The subject most common-place to common minds, comes from his hands beautified and exalted; his cordial tone warms the sym-. pathy, as his delicate handling delights the taste. We feel that he sees things as we ought to have seen them, and as we flatter ourselves we might have learned to regard them, if our attention had been turned towards them. We accept his guidance to a quicker perception of the true and the beautiful, without a sacrifice of pride; for he is to us only an elder brother whom the common course of things has brought to an earlier sense of those delights. We are so sure of his love that we forget to be jealous of his assumed authority. The title of the present work-the Indicator-is certainly happily chosen. This is the name of a bird whose office seems to be to point out the places where honey is to be found; a grateful task, to which that here undertaken by the poet of Rimini is closely analogous. He leads us through fragrant shades, with beauty making a sunshine everywhere about us; and having threaded them himself until each turn and winding is familiar, he is able to show us at once the loveliest spots and the sweetest resting-places, and to teach us, "by his art," to distinguish and appreciate the notes of those more ex |