cause its appropriated acres, would, on the simple tie of appropriation being broken, lapse in a very few years into a frightful solitude, or if not bereft of humanity altogether, would at last become as desolate and dreary as a North American wilderness."

We shall not be able to enter on the consideration of Mr. Stirling's chapters on the difficult subjects of money, and bullion, and rates of exchange in connexion with foreign trade. In his treatment of these, we apprehend a greater clearness of explanation than is to be met with in most other authors; and before the reader who has not yet succeeded in mastering this department of the science, shall give it up as hopeless and impracticable, we advise him to make a study of the monetary sketches, or we should rather say demonstrations, which are presented in this volume.

But there is one remaining topic suggested by the following extract at p. 103 of this work, which will take up all the remaining space that can be allowed for our article:

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By what means the standard of comfort and enjoyment which obtains among the great body of the people can be most effectually elevated or best maintained, and those provident habits upon which depend the relative supply and value of labour best engendered or secured, is a problem of absorbing interest, because of supreme practical importance, -one compared with which all our other speculations sink into insignificance; but it is a problem of which the science of value can afford no solution. To that science labour presents itself simply as a subject which can be sold or exchanged, and the value of which, in relation to other subjects of exchange, fluctuates with the relative increase or decrease of its quantity. With the causes of that increase or decrease our science has no more concern than with the causes of the increase or decrease of corn or broadcloth; and as the one subject is handed over to the agriculturist or the manufacturer, so must the other to the moralist, the politician, or the practical statesman. A theme of such moment and magnitude may well employ the best power s of the human mind, but it is not within the limits assigned to the present work."-Footnote, p. 103.

Mr. Stirling does not over-estimate the importance of the theme adverted to in this extract, and neither is he singular in rejecting it from the science of Political Economy. But, on the other hand, the economists in general seem little aware how much by thus stopping short at their own formulæ, they abridge the interest and the esteem which might otherwise be felt for their subject. They are the mixed mathematics which have raised the pure mathematics to a tenfold higher place than they would otherwise have occupied, in the respect not of the general only, but of the scientific public. But for their wondrous applications to astronomy, and the other branches of physics, they might have

VOL. VI. NO. XI.

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been ranked with the transcendental metaphysics, or any other science of profitless abstractions, which afford a mere play to the intellect, but without enlarging our acquaintance with the realities of the surrounding universe, or without application to the interests and affairs of the living world. And there is a class of mixed questions in danger of being lost sight of altogether-unless, indeed, by the invention of some uncouth name, as the economico-moral, or the theologico-economical, they have a place assigned to them in the list of sciences; and a structure be raised on the middle ground which they occupy, that might give them a standing in the encyclopædia of human knowledge. For without some such contrivance, and if our economists will persist in casting out from their domain every one topic, however urgent its importance might be, in which the moral and the economical are blended, there is no general likelihood of its being taken in by our divines. For if economists, on the one hand, will not recognise the importance of the Christian element in giving prosperous fulfilment and effect even to their own speculations, as, for example, how to secure that distribution of wealth which might best conduce to the general comfort and well-being of society on the other hand, our theologians bear marvellously little regard to political economy, as if the secularity of its title gave it somewhat of a heathenish aspect in their eyes. It is thus that between the two sciences, our subject, knocking at the door of each, and begging for admittance, is, we greatly apprehend, in the imminent danger of being fairly turned off, and becoming an outcast from both.

Nevertheless, we shall not despair. Experience will at length do what argument has failed to do. It will work that conviction which the reasonings of many long years have not been able to accomplish. To select two examples out of the many: the law of Pauperism which we deem to be wrong, and the law of Free Trade which is right-the one enacted some years ago both for Ireland and Scotland; the other but a few months ago for the whole empire. The former, brought on by a whining sentimentalism, in which our Evangelicals largely shared, will at length be found of pernicious effect in depressing the condition of the working classes; and the latter of no effect in raising it—or, in other words, the one destructive of the object, the other wholly inadequate for its fulfilment. We have long contended that the only specific for that attainment, after which so many of our patriots and philanthropists are now labouring as in the very fire, yet hitherto in vain-a diffused comfort and sufficiency throughout the masses—is a universal Christian education. The ministers of the Gospel may not understand the rationale of those economic forces which it is for them, and them only, to set a-going,

nor do we ask them to understand it. The dynamics of the process are in their hands, whether or not they comprehend their mode of operation. The economists ought to comprehend it, but will not listen to the demonstration, as if the very sound of the Gospel, like that of a strange matter brought to their ears, scared them away; or as if they resented the invasion of such a visitant on that territory which is peculiarly theirs. Meanwhile time, the most powerful of all demonstrators, will at length evince the glorious harmony which subsists between truth in every one department and truth in every other; and most strikingly of all, the wisdom of that God, who amid the puny speculations of men, each contracted within his own little sphere, so adjusts the parts and relations of His wondrous universe, that the economy of His works will ever subserve the economy of His word, and so as to ensure for godliness the promise of the life that now is, as well as of the life which is to come. Whether for individuals or nations, it will be found true, that if they seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all other things shall be added to them.

It is thus that the controversy, whether the economical should precede the moral, or the moral the economical, in the treatment of our population-a question which has already been scripturally pronounced upon-will at length be experimentally settled. For ourselves, we should not contend for the precedency of the moral in the order of time, if both the one and the other were adopted contemporaneously, and acted on immediately. But we have a very strong conviction, that, in the order of cause and effect, the moral is the grand, nay, the indispensable precursor of all those reforms in the state of the people, which the most enlightened public men of our day are most set upon. But it is a sad inversion of the order, when the attempt to moralize is deferred on the imagination, that first to raise them economically is the indispensable precursor of such an accomplishment. We, on the contrary, hold that Christianity is to any great extent the alone effectual engine for the moralization of the people; and that, as in the days of Paul, Christianity should be addressed instanter to the Barbarian as well as to the Greek. It is never too soon to address the consciences, or the religious fears and feelings of men; and all experience attests that this might be done with as great, perhaps greater success, among the most sunken of nature's children, as among those more elevated in the scale of society,-after which every secular and secondary interest of theirs might with all safety be committed to their own discretion, and left with all confidence in their own hands. But this, although in our judgment the only specific for the amelioration of the masses, is to be postponed we fear indefinitely, giving way to every other expedient which must first be tried. We

first hear of Free Trade for giving full employment to the people, and this we confidently predict will be found wanting, Then a law of pauperism for giving full relief to the people, and this will be found worse than wanting-ruinous. Then cottage allotments, giving rise to similar aggregates of population as those wherewith we have been long familiar in Scotland,-villages of small feuars, and through which it has been attempted to raise the comfort, but altogether in vain, when unaccompanied by any direct provision for raising the character and intelligence of families. Then emigration, which, though tried on a scale of national magnitude, may of itself be expected to ease the pressure, but most assuredly will not be found to land us in a better or happier commonalty than before. The only reform in fact to which, apart from the moral and the educational, we can look with any degree of confidence, is the attempt now meditated, and which, under the able guidance of Lord Morpeth, we trust will not prove abortive, for a sanitory improvement in the state and dwellings of the working classes. This, pro tanto, might effect a real amelioration on the health, but not necessarily, and it is certain of itself not generally, on the morals of the humbler classes. At all events, it is a fair and promising subject for legislation; but we fear it will not be till after the experience of many failures, and the disappointment of many sanguine anticipations, that the eyes of our rulers will be open to the necessity, the prime and radical necessity, of a universal Christian education. The testimonies now so abundantly given to the importance of education in general, might be deemed an approximation to this last and only effectual solution of the great problem. And so it may if it but lead to the discovery, and therefore the acknowledgment, that a mere secular learning will not reach to the heart of that sore disease under which society is labouring; and that only on the basis of a scholarship leavened throughout with sound Christianity, can the peace and order and enduring prosperity of all classes be upholden.

ART. V.-1. Vindication of the Ancient Independence of Scotland. By JOHN ALLEN. London: Charles Knight. 1833. 2. Documents and Records illustrating the History of Scotland and the Transactions between the Crowns of England and Scotland, preserved in the Treasury of Her Majesty's Exchequer. Vol. I. Collected and Edited by SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE, K.H. of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law, Keeper of the Records in the aforesaid Treasury. Printed by Command of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, in pursuance of an Address of the House of Commons of Great Britain; and under the Direction of the Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom. 1837.

THE first of these publications is a little pamphlet, full of the good sense and temper of its lamented author. It was written for the purpose of setting right mistakes of late historians, and especially to meet a truculent attack upon those heroes whom we have been brought up to honour, who vindicated the independence of Scotland against the power and the art of Edward I. Sir Francis Palgrave has returned to the charge in the volume which we have mentioned last, and has made a Record publication the medium and channel of continuing his pleading against the ancient independence of Scotland.

Sir Francis Palgrave is a zealous Anglo-Saxon, and we have so much sympathy with that character that we must forgive him if his zeal sometimes outruns his discretion. He considers it to be necessary for the honour of the Anglo-Saxon name, that there should be, from the days of Hengist and Horsa downwards, a diadem and sceptre of Sovereignty to sway all Britain within the seas. It is of no consequence to him that he cannot always find a head to wear "the round and top of sovereignty" and a hand to grasp his air-drawn sceptre. No matter that for centuries the Saxons in England found occupation in cutting each other's throats, or resisting the Danish invaders, without turning their attention to rounding their empire and extending it on every side to the sea. They were predestined from the first to be the rulers of all Britain, and any insolent native tribes that dared to resist their divine right were properly treated as rebels. Wallace was traitor to his rightful sovereign, and hanged as he deserved; and Bruce is to be acknowledged only as a king de facto, a more successful rebel!

It is not that Sir Francis can greatly mislead in a matter like