ous.

the test of facts. It is needless to say, that it is this test alone by which theoretical opinions can be proved correct or erroneLet us apply them in particular to the circumstances in which all Europe and North America have been for some time, and which most practical men seem to reckon so extraordinary and unaccountable.

A supplier, a cotton-manufacturer, for example, might tell me in the name of his brethren: "Without meddling with theoretical niceties, we admit, as you do, in spite of whatever Dr. Adam Smith and others may affirm, that whoever can obtain a price for what he has got to dispose of, it matters not whether he be a ploughman, a manufacturer, a mechanic, a merchant, a soldier, a sailor, lawyer, clergyman, or doctor, will be enabled. to purchase from others to the amount of what he obtains, and no more; or, if you choose, will be an agent in the production of wealth, or the reproduction of employment, to that amount. This our experience fully confirms. We will also grant you, that M. Say's doctrine, though it seems reasonable on first thoughts, is opposed by our experience; for we find, often to our cost, that a general increase in the quantum of produce is by no means equivalent to an increase of value, but frequently the reverse. Still, however, even according to your own ideas, an increase of produce, when regulated by the demand, is an increase of value; and when co-operating with an increase of population, will go in creating an additional quantum of demand.

"Now here arises the difficulty. Whence come these fallings off in the demand, while the supply of almost all classes is rather increasing than diminishing?"

66

Why, for example, Sir, have we been suffering from a deficiency in the demand during the whole of 1819, and up to the present time, which has reduced prices in such a degree, as to deprive a very considerable mass of their former comforts, while, in 1817 and 1818, we had an universal demand, which gave full employment and fair prices to all who were disposed to exert themselves?

"Has not the natural produce of the earth during 1819 and 1820 been as abundant as in the two prior years? Have we not the same means of producing in every line, the same (but probably more) capital, and the same desire to produce? Has not our population been still increasing, as in those prior years, and, of course, must there not be an increase in the demand arising from these young additional circulators, who are, as you yourself state, demanders and not suppliers? Have we not the same facility of intercourse with our foreign customers? And yet are not we, throughout almost all our classes (excepting fixed annuitants) as well as these foreign customers amid all

this sameness of circumstances, instead of being in a state of comfort, in a state approaching to distress? "This is the question that puzzles us. And what we want statisticians to account for, is, why similar circumstances should produce such opposite results? And why, with so much capital, such effective means of supplying, and such a willingness to supply, we should be incapable of procuring the usual quantity of income? In a word, Why Europe and North America, amid general peace and plenty, should have been for nearly two years in a state of comparative general distress?"

This question has actually been propounded to our legislators and statisticians*: and if the latter cannot answer it satisfactorily, these practical men have a right to say, that their science is, with respect to a most important division of facts, of no real value. Their peculiar principles must be imaginary or erroneous; they cannot be those of nature.

In my next Letter, Sir, I shall venture on an attempt to give an answer for myself on this very important practical question, according to the principles of the Productive System.

S. GRAY.

MODERN IMPROVEMENTS.

MR. EDITOR. I trust that, even in this age of improvement, you will suffer one of the old school to occupy a small space in your pages. A few words respecting myself will, however, be necessary to apologize for my opinions. Once I was among the gayest and sprightliest of youthful aspirants for fame and fortune. Being a second son, I was bred to the bar, and pursued my studies with great vigour and eager hope, in the Middle Temple. I loved, too, one of the fairest of her sex, and was beloved in return. My toils were sweetened by the delightful hope that they would procure me an income sufficient for the creditable support of the mistress of my soul. Alas! at the very moment when the unlooked-for devise of a large estate from a distant relative gave me affluence, she for whom alone I desired wealth, sunk under the attack of a fever into the grave. Religion enabled me to bear her loss with firmness, but I determined, for her sake, ever to remain a bachelor. Although composed and tranquil, I felt myself unable to endure

I know not whether you have had an opportunity of seeing the Report of a Committee of the Merchants, Manufacturers, and Traders of Birmingham, on the subject of the prevailing Stagnation, published in the Farmer's Journal of the 25th of September last. It seems to be entirely free from the spirit of party, (which never fails to lessen the value of statements with all impartial enquirers, and to render the whole suspected;) and it is drawn up in a masterly manner. It claims the most serious consideration of our legislators, as well as of our professed statisticians. VOL. 1. NO. I.

H

the forms, or to taste the pleasures, of London. I retired to my estate in the country, where I have lived for almost forty years in the society of a maiden sister, happy if an old friend came for a few days to visit me, but chiefly delighting to cherish in silence the remembrance of my only love, and to anticipate the time when I shall be laid beside her. At last, a wish to settle an orphan nephew in my own profession, has compelled me to visit the scenes of my early days, and to mingle, for a short time, with the world. My resolution once taken, I felt a melancholy pleasure in the expectation of seeing the places with which I was once familiar, and which were ever linked in my mind with sweet and blighted hope. Every change has been to me as a shock. I have looked at large on society too, and there I see little in brilliant innovation to admire. Returned at last to my own fire-side, I sit down to throw together a few thoughts on the new and boasted Improvements, over which I mourn. If I should seem too querulous, let it be remembered, that my own happy days are long past, and that recollection is the sole earthly joy which is left me.

My old haunts have indeed suffered comparatively small mutation. The princely hall of the Middle Temple has the same venerable aspect as when, in my boyish days, I felt my heart beating with a strange feeling of mingled pride and reverence on becoming one of its members. The fountain yet plays among the old trees, which used to gladden my eye in spring for a few days with their tender green, to become so prematurely desolate. But the front of the Inner Temple hall, upon the terrace, is sadly altered for the worse. When I first knew it, the noble solidity of its appearance, especially of the figure over the gateway, cut massively in the stone, carried the mind back into the deep antiquity of the scene. Now the whole building is white-washed and plastered over, the majestic entrance supplied by an arch of pseudo-gothic, and a new library added at vast cost in the worst taste of the modern antique. The view from the garden is spoiled by that splendid nuisance, the Strand Bridge. Formerly we used to enjoy the enormous bend of the river, far fairer than the most marvellous work of art; and while our eyes dwelt on the placid mirror of water, our imagination went over it, through calm and majestic windings, into sweet rural scenes, and far inland bowers. Now the river appears only an oblong lake, and the feeling of the country once let into the town by that glorious avenue of crystal, is shut out by a noble piece of mere human workmanship! But nature never changes, and some of her humble works are ever found to renew old feelings within us, notwithstanding the sportive changes of mortal fancy. The short grass of the Temple garden is the same as when forty years ago 1 was accus

tomed to refresh my weary eyes with its greenness. There I have strolled again; and while I bent my head downwards, and fixed my eyes on the thin blades and the soft daisies, I felt as I had felt when last I walked there-all between was as nothing, or a feverish dream-and I once more dreamed of the Seals, and of the living Sophia!-I felt-but I dare not trust myself on this subject further.

The profession of the law is strangely altered since the days of my youth. It was then surely more liberal, as well as more rational, than I now find it. The business and pleasure of a lawyer were not entirely separated, as at present, when the first is mere toil, and the second lighter than vanity. The old stouthearted pleaders threw a jovial life into their tremendous drudgeries, which almost rendered them delightful. Wine did but open to them the most curious intricacies of their art they rose from it, like giants refreshed, to grapple with the sternest difficulties, and rejoiced in the encounter. Their powers caught a glow in the severity of the struggle, almost like that arising from strong exertion of the bodily frame. Nor did they disdain to enjoy the quaint jest of the far-fetched allusion, or the sweetness of the antique fancy, which sometimes craftily peeped out on thêm amidst their laborious researches. Poor TW was one of the last of the race. He was the heartiest and most romantic of special pleaders. Thrice happy was the attorney who could engage him to a steak or broiled fowl in the old coffee-room in Fleet-street, where I have often met him. How would he then dilate, in the warmth of his heart, on all his professional triumphs-now chuckling over the fall of a brother into a trap set artfully for him in the fair guise of liberal pleadingnow whispering a joy past joy in a stumble of the Lord Chief Justice himself, among the filmy cords drawn about his path! When the first bottle was dispatched, arrived the time for his wary host to produce his papers in succession, to be drawn or settled by the joyous pleader. The well-lauded inspiration of a poet is not more genuine than that with which he then was gifted. All his nice discernment-all his vast memory--all his skill in drawing analogies and discerning principles in the "great obscurity" of the Year Books--were set in rapid and unerring action. On he went--covering page after page, his pen"in giddy mazes running," and his mind growing subtler and more acute with every glass. How dextrously did he then glide through all the strange windings of the case, with a sagacity which never failed, while he garnished his discourse with many a legal pun and learned conceit, which was as the light bubble on the deep stream of his knowledge! He is gone!-and I find none to resemble him in this generation-none who thus can put a spirit into their work, which may make cobweb

sophistries look golden, and change a laborious life into one long holiday!

In the greater world, I have observed with sorrow, a prevailing disregard of the past, and a desire to extol the present, or to expatiate in visionary prospects of the future. I fear this may be traced not so much to philanthropy as to self-love, which inspires men with the wish personally to distinguish themselves as the teachers and benefactors of their species, instead of rejoicing to share in the vast stock of recollections and sympathies which is common to all. They would fain persuade us, that mankind, created, a little lower than the angels," is now for the first time "crowned with glory and honour;" and they exultingly point to institutions of yesterday for the means to regenerate the earth. Some, for example, pronounce the great mass of the people, through all ages, as scarcely elevated above the brutes which perish, because the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, were not commonly diffused among them; and on these they ground their predictions of a golden age. And were there then no virtuous hardihood, no guileless innocence, no affections stronger than the grave, in that mighty lapse of years which we contemptuously stigmatize as dark? Are disinterested patriotism, conjugal love, open-handed hospitality, meek self-sacrifice, and chivalrous contempt of danger and of death, modern inventions? Has man's great birthright been in abeyance even until now? Oh, no! The Chaldæan shepherd did not cast his quiet gaze through weeks and years in vain to the silent skies. He knew not, indeed, the chill discoveries of science, which have substituted an immense variety of figures on space and distance, for the sweet influences of the stars. Yet did the heavens tell to him the glory of God, and angel faces seem to smile on him from the golden clouds. Book-learning is, perhaps, the least part of the education of the species. Nature is the mightiest and the kindliest of teachers. The rocks and unchanging hills give to the heart the sense of a duration beyond that of the perishable body. The flowing stream images to the soul an everlasting continuity of tranquil existence. "The brave o'erhanging firmament,' even to the most rugged swain, imparts

some consciousness of the universal brotherhood of those over whom it hangs. The affections ask no leave of the understanding to "glow and spread and kindle," to shoot through all the frame a tremulous joy, or animate to holiest constancy. We taste the dearest blessedness of earth in our childhood, before we have learned to express it in mortal language. Life has its universal lessons far beyond human lore. Kindness is as melting, sorrow as purifying, and the aspect of death as softening, to the ignorant in this world's wisdom, as to the scholar. The purest delights grow tenderly beneath our feet, and all who will stoop