ficient, for a total revolution in economy, - these he held with the grasp of Talus, the iron man of Crete. In the outlying parts of his own system, meantime, he was sceptical; and what was not determinate to himself, he could not make so to others.

NOTE 39. Page 140.

"Might rejoice."—No, he might not rejoice. In any case he is bound to mourn, says the man of the superannuated economic systems smashed by Ricardo. But why does he say so? Consistently enough his doctrine, his creed, is known: wages, for him, constitute the basis of price. Do wages happen to rise under a rise of wheat? Prices, he holds, must rise commensurately. Ergo, as all men use grain or other landed produce, to him it seems that all prices must rise; and pro tanto. But we, Ricardian Protestants, know far otherwise. Even the novice is now aware that a rise in wages would leave prices undisturbed. And now, perhaps, by this practical application of his knowledge, the novice begins to suspect that his studies upon value were not quite so aerial.

NOTE 40. Page 146.

"The case c." - One, and perhaps the very largest, vice in the science of teaching is, that the teacher, chained up by his own subjective preoccupations, cannot see with the eyes of the novice; cannot dismiss his own difficulties, and enter, as into an inheritance, upon those of his pupil. Not until this moment did it strike me, that the reader, having lately heard and read so much of the land-scale, (which means the devolution of culture through all gradations of soil, from optimism down to pessimism, in order to meet the expansions of population,) will naturally suppose that Ricardo's table rests upon a basis of that kind; that the case c, for instance, means land which is one degree worse than that in case B. Not at all. A, B, C, D, and E, all represent one and the same soil, but continually forced, by other soils, into fresh expansions of rent.

NOTE 41. Page 147.

"A similar reason," — viz. because 30 quarters out of 180 being now disposable for rent, leaving only 150 for wages and profits, then by the rule of three,-150: 180:: £4: £4 16s.

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 continually 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 33 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.

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

3

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