services. And thus we may trace the flour through all its stages of transportation or of manufacture, and we shall find that at each successive creation of value, whether by change of place or by change of form, the value created tends by a law of nature to divide and diffuse itself among all who coöperate immediately or remotely in creating it. These elementary views of the nature of wealth, of the forces that coöperate in the production of wealth, and of the natural laws that determine the distribution of wealth, are to political economy what "the four ground rules" are to arithmetic. Upon these elementary views, all the applications of the science primarily depend. And as the science, starting from these first principles, is extended by induction and analysis, and carried out into its details, it is found to be capable of the most important applications to the business of legislation and to the whole philosophy of the welfare and progress of society; while on the other hand, he who undertakes the functions of a political or social reformer without a familiar acquaintance with these elements of political economy, will be likely to involve his schemes in the grossest and most fatal blunders. Mr. Kellogg's book is an attempt to set forth "the cause why few are wealthy and many poor," and to propose a remedy. The mistakes upon which the whole attempt is founded, are of such a nature that a little familiarity with the distinct meanings of the three words, wealth, capital and money, or a little familiarity with the phenomena of production and distribution, would have made it impossible for the author, with all the benevolence of his intentions, to make such an "exposition" and proposal. He confounds the productive power of capital, or in other words the profits of capital, and the rent of land also, with the interest of money; and in his opinion "the power of money to accumulate value by interest"-and indeed every other quality of money -is dependent entirely on the will of the legislature. His grand remedy for all the evils that afflict society, is the issue of an indefinite quantity of paper money, which shall be loaned by the government of the United States, to all comers who will secure the loans they ask for by a mortgage of productive lands of twice the value of the loan, and for the use of which the borrower shall pay interest to the government at the annual rate of 1' per cent. This paper currency is not to derive its value from so paltry a circumstance as convertibility into gold and silver at the pleasure of the holder; but it is to be money in its own right by the efficacy of an act of Congress endowing it with all the qualities of money. If a man finds at any time that he has more than he wants of this "safety fund money," as the inventor proposes to call it, he can exchange it on demand for a "safety fund note," which is nothing else than a certificate of stock in a national debt paying interest annually at one per cent. The benev olent inventor is quite sure that, under such a system, all sorts of industry would thrive without check or fluctuation; and that, in every creation of value, the laborer would get almost all, and the capitalist almost nothing. He has no suspicion that when his new order of things has been introduced, and money of gold and silver has been superseded by his new currency with indefinite capability of expansion, the price of land will increase, or the price of houses, or the price of food, or the price of tools and machinery, or the price of clothing, or the price of any product of labor; while the price of labor itself will be indefinitely augmented. And his imagination glows with the anticipation of the moral changes which will ensue when labor shall obtain its "natural reward." "Ultima Cumai venit jam carminis ætas ; Thus in consequence of the expulsion of gold and silver from circulation as money, and the legislative reduction of the rate of yearly interest to 1 per cent, "Time will fly back and bring the age of gold." Or, in the author's own expressive prose, "When the natural reward of labor is secured to the laborer, poverty can not exist in any family whose members are able and willing to work. And those who can so easily provide for their own wants, will cheerfully contribute to the support of the sick and needy. They will be able to supply themselves amply with the comforts of life, and have an abundance of time for intellectual and moral culture. The incentives to vice will be comparatively few. Avarice first arises from the fear of want; to remove want will therefore in a great measure remove this vice, and the unnumbered evils which are its attendants."-pp. 284, 285. "If interest be reduced to a just rate, almost the entire population of the country will be engaged in some species of productive industry, and the laboring classes will be relieved from the support of a numerous body who now live by their wits-that is, by contriving to obtain the products of others without toil. When money is made a just standard, the injustice of contracts founded upon it will cease, and many laws necessary to support the present unjust standard will disappear. "So long as monetary laws continue a standard that will wrest products from producers, and place and protect them in the hands of non-producers, they will require for their support the aid of the sword and bayonet, because man's natural sense of right revolts against the usurpation and the injustice of such protection. But when monetary laws shall sustain a just standard of value, which will award and protect products in the hands of their producers, they will of course conform to the natural laws of production, which were ordained by a higher than human power. The distribution then being according to justice, strife will cease, because a man having his own rights respected and protected, will naturally respect and protect the rights of others. The time is not far distant when this truth will be known and appreciated by all civilized nations, and the mistaken power of legal might, which has such dominion over man, will wither before the higher power of right."―pp. 288, 289. And yet, before we are quite carried away by so cheering a prospect, we can not but ask for information on another point. Admitting the proximate results which the author anticipates— admitting that, under his system of "safety fund money," all but an inconsiderable fraction of the product of industry will go, in every case, into the hands of the laborer, while only that inconsiderable fraction will go to the proprietor of the land and the capital-what motive shall hinder the laborer from consuming his wages as fast as he earns them?—and what security have we that the capitalist will not withdraw his property from all productive employment to consume it in the gratification of other desires which, in this new condition of things, have become more effective than the desire of accumulation? The stimulus to that frugal saving on the part of individuals, out of which grows all the accumulation of wealth in society, is found in the productive power of capital and the returns which capital therefore brings to its proprietor. What is it which determines the laborer to put five dollars every month into the Savings Bank, instead of spending it for a frolic or for some foolish luxury? It is that every deposit is productive of yearly interest at five per cent. If a man has twenty thousand dollars, why is it that instead of spending it upon hounds and cooks and fiddlers, he invests it in commerce or in manufactures? It is that such investments are productive, and will give him annual returns of six, eight, or perhaps twenty per cent. Where then is Mr. Kellogg's beautiful picture of universal industry, contentment, benevolence, and good morals? Gone to the limbo of vanity. The laborer to whom that exhilarating increase of wages has been secured, finds that the superfluous dollar or five dollars of his first day's wages, is incapable of any lucrative investment. And before the end of his first month under the new system, he finds that a universal paralysis has struck the nerves of industry. The ship that returned from her voyage richly laden, goes forth no more. One great establishment and another is beginning to be dismantled. The fires of the forge are extinguished. The water pours along the raceway, neglected. To the momentary dance of exhilarated prodigality, there begins to succeed the grim procession of alarm, want, idleness, despair and rage. We were looking for the laborer's millennium, but behold! destruction and the returning reign of "Chaos and old Night!" We have said less of Mr. Colton's book than its pretensions may seem to require. Our apology for this must be-if any apology is needed-our inability to do full justice to such a book within the limits of an article like this. The leading idea of the book-its unity-is opposition to freedom of commercial intercourse between the United States and other countries. We could not enter upon the discussion of so great and grave a subject, and one so implicated with popular prejudices and vested interests, without more space than now remains to us. The time may come when this volume of "Public Economy" will be read by philosophic minds with an attention which, in the present stage of human progress, it can hardly command. ART. VII.-LIEUTENANT LYNCH'S EXPEDITION. Narrative of the United States' Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea; by W. F. LYNCH, U. S. N., Commander of the Expedition. With maps and numerous illustrations. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 1849. THE shroud has at length been lifted from the sea of death. The sea, innavigable, has been sailed over; the waters, in which iron would not sink, have been sounded; the abyss, within which no living being could enter and return alive, has been penetrated, and the bold adventurers have survived to tell the wonders they saw. No where on the earth is there a spot, the nature and history of which are so well fitted to cherish gloomy imaginations and breed superstitions. Precipitous mountain walls shut in and exclude it from observation, thick mists and vapors exhale from its stagnant waters, and rising as if smoke from the still smouldering cities, hang in clouds above and around it, or disappear only before the beams of the sun, which, striking from the naked cliffs, seem to reverberate from the arches of a fiery furnace. Every thing throughout its whole extent appears to authenticate by an adaptedness of nature the catastrophe on its southern shores. There are wonders enough in the reality, but the imperfect knowledge, which has hitherto prevailed concerning it, was just sufficient to convert these wonders into mysteries and miracles. But true information can now take the place of fable and traditionary marvels. We are mainly indebted for this to the expedition under the command of Lieutenant Lynch, and we acknowledge that we take not a little pride in the success of an enterprise so honorable to our government. That a region always known among the nations of the earth, as the region of unnatural wonders, and at the same time a region on many accounts peculiarly interesting to the Christian world, should have remained unexplored till this time, though all the civilized nations of antiquity have successively had access to it, and the leading maritime powers of Europe have of late years had fleets in the waters which almost wash its western borders, and that this exploration should have been reserved for a Lieutenant in the navy of a far distant empire in the new world, with a handful of sailors at his command is to us not the least among the marvels of this marvelous region. The scientific and Christian public is under great obligation to the late Secretary of the Navy, the Hon. John Y. Mason, that amidst the turmoil of war, he should be willing to turn his attention to the peaceful pursuits of science, and should seek to find employment for a small portion of the navy in an enterprise scarcely less hazardous, and at least not less honorable to the country, than the bombardment of Mexican cities, in which it has just been employed. But of the origination of the undertaking, of the perseverance which set it on foot and made the necessary preparations, and of the intelligent enthusiasm which prosecuted it to a successful issue, we must award the credit to Lieutenant Lynch. A birds-eye view of the Holy Land presents on its western border a somewhat level region of irregular breadth, extending the whole length of the Mediterranean coast; next to this, a chain of mountains passing through its center, and spreading out on the north into the mountainous region of Galilee, and on the south dropping down into low hills, and at length vanishing in deserts; then, a broad barren tract; and, finally, the most remarkable feature of the whole, a deeply depressed valley fortified on each side by mountains, and extending through a distance of nearly four hundred miles, from the foot of Lebanon to the eastern arm of the Red Sea. In this valley lie the lakes Hûleh and Tiberias, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan. As the existence of this valley has been known only within a recent period, and as in its exploration, the present expedition has borne a most important part, we will give a more particular description of it. This valley, then, may be regarded as commencing with the basin and lake of the Hûleh. Anti-Lebanon, or as it is now called, Jebel esh-Shurky, separates at a point nearly opposite Damascus into two ridges, of which, the western takes a southwestern course and sweeps round until it unites with the higher spurs and bluffs of Lebanon itself, thus shutting off the celebrated valley of Coele-Syria, while the eastern, called Jebel eshSheikh, pursuing the same general course, gradually slopes down and loses itself in a plain. From the base of this eastern ridge, at its highest point, a low mountainous tract starts off towards the south, and at the point where the western ridge joins with Lebanon, a similar tract stretches in the same direction in a course nearly parallel to the former. The basin of the Hûleh is determined by this configuration of the mountains. On the north a space is opened for it, by the sloping down of Jebel esh-Sheikh and the trending of the western ridge to its junction with Lebanon, while it is enclosed on the east and west by the mountainous tracts which rise out of these ridges. The northern part of the basin is a volcanic plain, its center an impassable marsh, and it terminates in the lake of Hûleh. The Jordan takes its rise from a fountain in the valley between the eastern and western ridges of Anti-Lebanon, not a great distance northwest of Hasbeiya. There are two other streams, one, starting from a fountain at the foot of the mountain northeast of Bâniâs, and the other, at the fountain of Tell el-Kâdy, two |