vigorous and splendid youth of a great people, whose veins are filled with our blood, whose minds are nourished with our literature, and on whom is entailed the rich inheritance of our civilisation, our freedom, and our glory.

has learned to talk modern English. He has read all the new publications, and loves a jest as well as when he jested with the executioner, though we cannot say that the quality of his wit has materially improved in Paradise. His powers of reasoning, too, are by But we must return to Mr. Southey's no means in as great vigour as when study at Keswick. The visiter informs he sate on the woolsack; and though he the hospitable poet that he is not an boasts that he is "divested of all those American but a spirit. Mr. Southey, passions which cloud the intellects and with more frankness than civility, tells warp the understandings of men," we him that he is a very queer one. The think him, we must confess, far less stranger holds out his hand. It has stoical than formerly. As to revelaneither weight nor substance. Mr. tions, he tells Mr. Southey at the outSouthey upon this becomes more se- set to expect none from him. The rious; his hair stands on end; and he ad- Laureate expresses some doubts, which jures the spectre to tell him what he is, assuredly will not raise him in the and why he comes. The ghost turns out opinion of our modern millennarians, to be Sir Thomas More. The traces of as to the divine authority of the Apomartyrdom, it seems, are worn in the calypse. But the ghost preserves an other world, as stars and ribands are impenetrable silence. As far as we worn in this. Sir Thomas shows the remember, only one hint about the empoet a red streak round his neck, ployment of disembodied spirits escapes brighter than a ruby, and informs him him. He encourages Mr. Southey that Cranmer wears a suit of flames into hope that there is a Paradise Press, Paradise, the right hand glove, we suppose, of peculiar brilliancy.

Sir Thomas pays but a short visit on this occasion, but promises to cultivate the new acquaintance which he has formed, and, after begging that his visit may be kept secret from Mrs. Southey, vanishes into air.

at which all the valuable publications of Mr. Murray and Mr. Colburn are reprinted as regularly as at Philadelphia; and delicately insinuates that Thalaba and the Curse of Kehama are among the number. What a contrast does this absurd fiction present to those charming narratives which Plato and The rest of the book consists of Cicero prefixed to their dialogues! conversations between Mr. Southey What cost in machinery, yet what poand the spirit about trade, currency, verty of effect! A ghost brought in to Catholic emancipation, periodical lite- say what any man might have said! rature, female nunneries, butchers, The glorified spirit of a great statessnuff, book-stalls, and a hundred other man and philosopher dawdling, like a subjects. Mr. Southey very hospi- bilious old nabob at a watering place, tably takes an opportunity to escort over quarterly reviews and novels, the ghost round the lakes, and directs dropping in to pay long calls, making his attention to the most beautiful excursions in search of the picturesque! points of view. Why a spirit was to The scene of St. George and St. Denbe evoked for the purpose of talking nis in the Pucelle is hardly more ridiover such matters and seeing such culous. We know what Voltaire sights, why the vicar of the parish, a meant. Nobody, however, can suppose blue-stocking from London, or an that Mr. Southey means to make game American, such as Mr. Southey at of the mysteries of a higher state of first supposed the aerial visiter to be, existence. The fact is that, in the work might not have done as well, we are before us, in the Vision of Judgement, unable to conceive. Sir Thomas tells and in some of his other pieces, his Mr. Southey nothing about future mode of treating the most solemn subevents, and indeed absolutely dis-jects differs from that of open scoffers claims the gift of prescience. He only as the extravagant representations

We

of sacred persons and things in some duced into those counties. The returns grotesque Italian paintings differ from for the years ending in March 1825, the caricatures which Carlile exposes and in March 1828, are now before us. in the front of his shop. We interpret In the former year we find the poorthe particular act by the general cha-rate highest in Sussex, about twenty racter. What in the window of a con- shillings to every inhabitant. Then victed blasphemer we call blasphemous, come Buckinghamshire, Essex, Suffolk, we call only absurd and ill judged in Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, an altar-piece. and Norfolk. In all these the rate is above fifteen shillings a head. will not go through the whole. Even in Westmoreland and the North Riding of Yorkshire, the rate is at more than eight shillings. In Cumberland and Monmouthshire, the most fortunate of all the agricultural districts, it is at six shillings. But in the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is as low as five shillings; and when we come to Lancashire, we find it at four shillings, one fifth of what it is in Sussex. The returns of the year ending in March 1828 are a little, and but a little, more unfavourable to the manufacturing districts. Lancashire, even in that season of distress, required a smaller poor-rate than any other district, and little more than one fourth of the poorrate raised in Sussex. Cumberland alone, of the agricultural districts, was as well off as the West Riding of Yorkshire. These facts seem to indicate that the manufacturer is both in a more comfortable and in a less dependent situation than the agricultural labourer.

We now come to the conversations which pass between Mr. Southey and Sir Thomas More, or rather between two Southeys, equally eloquent, equally angry, equally unreasonable, and equally given to talking about what they do not understand.* Perhaps we could not select a better instance of the spirit which pervades the whole book than the passages in which Mr. Southey gives his opinion of the manufacturing system. There is nothing which he hates so bitterly. It is, according to him, a system more tyrannical than that of the feudal ages, a system of actual servitude, a system which destroys the bodies and degrades the minds of those who are engaged in it. He expresses a hope that the competition of other nations may drive us out of the field; that our foreign trade may decline; and that we may thus enjoy a restoration of national sanity and strength. But he seems to think that the extermination of the whole manufacturing population would be a blessing, if the evil could be removed in no other way.

As to the effect of the manufacturing system on the bodily health, we must beg leave to estimate it by a standard far too low and vulgar for a mind so imaginative as that of Mr. Southey, the proportion of births and deaths. We know that, during the growth of this atrocious system, this new misery, to use the phrases of Mr. Southey, this new enormity, this birth of a portentous age, this pest which no man can approve whose heart is not seared or whose

Mr. Southey does not bring forward a single fact in support of these views; and, as it seems to us, there are facts which lead to a very different conclusion. In the first place, the poor-rate is very decidedly lower in the manufacturing than in the agricultural districts. If Mr. Southey will look over the Parliamentary returns on this subject, he will find that the amount of parochial relief required by the labourers in the different counties of Eng-understanding has not been darkened, land is almost exactly in inverse proportion to the degree in which the manufacturing system has been intro

* A passage in which some expressions used by Mr. Southey were misrepresented, certainly without any unfair intention, has been here omitted.

there has been a great diminution of mortality, and that this diminution has been greater in the manufacturing towns than any where else. The mortality still is, as it always was, greater in towns than in the country. But the difference has diminished in an extra

ordinary degree. There is the best reason to believe that the annual mortality of Manchester, about the middle of the last century, was one in twentyeight. It is now reckoned at one in forty-five. In Glasgow and Leeds a similar improvement has taken place. Nay, the rate of mortality in those three great capitals of the manufacturing districts is now considerably less than it was, fifty years ago, over England and Wales, taken together, open country and all. We might with some plausibility maintain that the people live longer because they are better fed, better lodged, better clothed, and better attended in sickness, and that these improvements are owing to that increase of national wealth which the manufacturing system has produced.

Much more might be said on this subject. But to what end? It is not from bills of mortality and statistical tables that Mr. Southey has learned his political creed. He cannot stoop to study the history of the system which he abuses, to strike the balance between the good and evil which it has produced, to compare district with district, or generation with generation. We will give his own reason for his opinion, the only reason which he gives for it, in his own words:

profusest in these parts, indicate in the owners some portion of ease and leisure, some regard to neatness and comfort, some sense of natural, and innocent, and healthful enjoyment. The new cottages of the manufacturers are upon the manufacturing pattern-naked, and in a row.

"How is it,' said I, 'that every thing which is connected with manufactures presents such features of unqualified deformity? From the largest of Mammon's temples down to the poorest hovel in which his helotry are stalled, these edifices have all one character. Time will not mellow them; and they will remain always as offensive to nature will neither clothe nor conceal them; the eye as to the mind.""

Here is wisdom. Here are the principles on which nations are to be governed. Rose-bushes and poor-rates, rather than steam-engines and independence. Mortality and cottages with weather-stains, rather than health and long life with edifices which time cannot mellow. We are told, that our age has invented atrocities beyond the imagination of our fathers; that society has been brought into a state compared with which extermination would be a blessing; and all because the dwellings of cotton-spinners are naked and rectangular. Mr. Southey has found out a way, he tells us, in which the effects of manufactures and agriculture may be compared. And what is this way? To stand on a hill, to look at a cottage and a factory, and to see which is the prettier. Does Mr. "We remained awhile in silence looking Southey think that the body of the upon the assemblage of dwellings below. Here, and in the adjoining hamlet of Mill- English peasantry live, or ever lived, beck, the effects of manufactures and of agri- in substantial or ornamented cottages, culture may be seen and compared. The with box-hedges, flower-gardens, becold cottages are such as the poet and the painter equally delight in beholding. Sub- hives, and orchards? If not, what is stantially built of the native stone without his parallel worth? We despise those mortar, dirtied with no white lime, and mock philosophers, who think that their long low roofs covered with slate, if they had been raised by the magic of some they serve the cause of science by deindigenous Amphion's music, the materials preciating literature and the fine arts. could not have adjusted themselves more But if any thing could excuse their beautifully in accord with the surrounding scene; and time has still further harmonized narrowness of mind, it would be such them with weather stains, lichens, and moss, short grasses, and short fern, and stone-plants of various kinds. The ornamented chimneys, round or square, less adorned than those which, like little turrets, crest the houses of the Portuguese peasantry; and yet not less happily suited to their place, the hedge of clipt box beneath the windows, the rose-bushes beside the door, the little patch of flower ground, with its tall hollyhocks in front; the garden beside, the beehives, and the orchard with its bank of daffodils and snow-drops, the earliest and the

a book as this. It is not strange that, when one enthusiast makes the picturesque the test of political good, another should feel inclined to proscribe altogether the pleasures of taste and imagination.

Thus it is that Mr. Southey reasons about matters with which he thinks himself perfectly conversant. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to find that he

commits extraordinary blunders when But Mr. Southey's error lies deeper he writes on points of which he ac- still. "All wealth," says he, " was knowledges himself to be ignorant. tangible and real till paper currency He confesses that he is not versed in was introduced." Now, was there ever, political economy, and that he has since men emerged from a state of neither liking nor aptitude for it; utter barbarism, an age in which there and he then proceeds to read the pub-were no debts? Is not a debt, while lic a lecture concerning it which fully the solvency of the debtor is undoubted, bears out his confession. always reckoned as part of the wealth "All wealth, says Sir Thomas of the creditor? Yet is it tangible More, "in former times was tangible. and real wealth? Does it cease to be It consisted in land, money, or chattels, wealth, because there is the security of which were either of real or conven- a written acknowledgment for it? tional value." And what else is paper currency? Did Mr. Southey ever read a banknote? If he did, he would see that it is a written acknowledgment of a debt, and a promise to pay that debt. The promise may be violated: the debt may remain unpaid: those to whom it was due may suffer but this is a "That bubble," says Sir Thomas, risk not confined to cases of paper was one of those contagious insa-currency: it is a risk inseparable from nities to which communities are sub- the relation of debtor and creditor. ject. All wealth was real, till the extent of commerce rendered a paper currency necessary; which differed from precious stones and pictures in this important point, that there was no limit to its production."

Montesinos, as Mr. Southey somewhat affectedly calls himself, answers thus:

"Jewels, for example, and pictures, as in Holland, where indeed at one time tulip bulbs answered the same purpose.'

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"We regard it," says Montesinos, as the representative of real wealth; and, therefore, limited always to the amount of what it represents."

"Pursue that notion," answers the ghost, "and you will be in the dark presently. Your provincial bank-notes, which constitute almost wholly the circulating medium of certain districts, pass current to-day. To-morrow tidings may come that the house which issued them has stopt payment, and what do they represent then? You will find them the shadow of a shade." We scarcely know at which end to begin to disentangle this knot of absurdities. We might ask, why it should be a greater proof of insanity in men to set a high value on rare tulips than on rare stones, which are neither more useful nor more beautiful? We might ask how it can be said that there is no limit to the production of paper money, when a man is hanged if he issues any in the name of another, and is forced to cash what he issues in his own?

Every man who sells goods for any thing but ready money runs the risk of finding that what he considered as part of his wealth one day is nothing at all the next day. Mr. Southey refers to the picture-galleries of Holland. The pictures were undoubtedly real and tangible possessions. But surely it might happen that a burgomaster might owe a picture-dealer a thousand guilders for a Teniers. What in this case corresponds to our paper money is not the picture, which is tangible, but the claim of the picture-dealer on his customer for the price of the picture; and this claim is not tangible. Now, would not the picture-dealer consider this claim as part of his wealth? Would not a tradesman who knew of the claim give credit to the picture-dealer the more readily on account of the claim? The burgomaster might be ruined. If so, would not those consequences follow which, as Mr. Southey tells us, were never heard of till paper money came into use? Yesterday this claim was worth a thousand guilders. To-day what is it ? The shadow of a shade.

It is true that, the more readily claims of this sort are transferred from hand to hand, the more extensive will

be the injury produced by a single industry in the kingdom, and feeds failure. The laws of all nations sanc- half the mouths. Take, indeed, the tion, in certain cases, the transfer of weight of the national debt from this rights not yet reduced into possession. great and complicated social machine, Mr. Southey would scarcely wish, we and the wheels must stop." should think, that all indorsements of bills and notes should be declared invalid. Yet even if this were done, the transfer of claims would imperceptibly take place, to a very great extent. When the baker trusts the butcher, for example, he is in fact, though not in form, trusting the butcher's customers. A man who owes large bills to tradesmen, and fails to pay them, almost always produces distress through a very wide circle of people with whom he never dealt.

In short, what Mr. Southey takes for a difference in kind is only a difference of form and degree. In every society men have claims on the property of others. In every society there is a possibility that some debtors may not be able to fulfil their obligations. In every society, therefore, there is wealth which is not tangible, and which may become the shadow of a shade.

From this passage we should have been inclined to think that Mr. Southey supposes the dividends to be a free gift periodically sent down from heaven to the fundholders, as quails and manna were sent to the Israelites; were it not that he has vouchsafed, in the following question and answer, to give the public some information which, we believe, was very little needed.

"Whence comes the interest?" says Sir Thomas.

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"It is raised," answers Montesinos, by taxation."

Now, has Mr. Southey ever considered what would be done with this sum if it were not paid as interest to the national creditor? If he would think over this matter for a short time, we suspect that the "momentous benefit" of which he talks would appear to him to shrink strangely in amount. A fundholder, we will suppose, spends dividends amounting to five hundred pounds a year; and his ten nearest

Mr. Southey then proceeds to a dissertation on the national debt, which he considers in a new and most conso-neighbours pay fifty pounds each to the latory light, as a clear addition to the income of the country.

"You can understand," says Sir Thomas, "that it constitutes a great part of the national wealth."

"So large a part," answers Montesinos, "that the interest amounted, during the prosperous times of agriculture, to as much as the rental of all the land in Great Britain; and at present to the rental of all lands, all houses, and all other fixed property put together."

tax-gatherer, for the purpose of discharging the interest of the national debt. If the debt were wiped out, a measure, be it understood, which we by no means recommend, the fundholder would cease to spend his five hundred pounds a year. He would no longer give employment to industry, or put food into the mouths of labourers. This Mr. Southey thinks a fearful evil. But is there no mitigating circumstance? Each of the ten neighbours of our fundholder has fifty pounds a The Ghost and Laureate agree that year more than formerly. Each of it is very desirable that there should them will, as it seems to our feeble unbe so secure and advantageous a de-derstandings, employ more industry posit for wealth as the funds afford. Sir Thomas then proceeds:

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Another and far more momentous benefit must not be overlooked; the expenditure of an annual interest, equalling, as you have stated, the present rental of all fixed property."

"That expenditure," quoth Montesinos, "gives employment to half the

and feed more mouths than formerly. The sum is exactly the same. It is in different hands. But on what grounds does Mr. Southey call upon us to believe that it is in the hands of men who will spend it less liberally or less judiciously? He seems to think that nobody but a fundholder can employ the poor; that, if a tax is remitted, those