VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

THE appeal of her Majesty's ministers has been made to the country; and the response to it, expressed constitutionally through its election of representatives, is hostile, to an "overwhelming' extent, to the existing cabinet and its proceedings. The epithet "overwhelming" is Lord John Russell's own, as applied to counties; but he might have added, "We have lost wherever loss was possible. In the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and Dublin, we could not lose, because all the former members were against us. In the English and Welsh boroughs and cities our losses exceed our gains by 8; in Scotland by 1; and in Ireland by 4. In the English counties we have lost 23; in the Scotch 2; and in the Irish 4; and the result of the whole is, that we are worse off than before by 40 votes, equal to eighty in a division; and that we are actually in a minority to about double that amount, making more than a hundred and sixty in a division." Many of the details are as significant as the aggregate amount; as, for instance, the election of two conservatives for London, and the all but rejection of Lord John Russell himself; the failure of Mr. Hume at Leeds, Mr. O'Connell in Dublin, Mr. Stanley in North Cheshire, Lord Palmerston at Liverpool, and Lord Howick in Northumberland, and Lord Morpeth and Lord Milton in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Under these circumstances her Majesty's ministers will be largely outvoted, and will resign, and Sir Robert Peel, so far as human foresight can discern, will speedily be the first responsible officer of government. With regard to his views of policy, he says that he will support the ancient institutions of the land, but will not resist "such changes as the altered circumstances of society may require." This is all that he can at present be expected to say; but such general pledges convey no definite information. We fear that Sir R. Peel has been too much a man of expediency, as that word is construed by secular statesmen, and that he has been too much accustomed to look to "the altered circumstances of society," rather than to unalterable principles. We trust, however, that he has learned some salutary lessons from the history of the last ten years; one of which is, that nothing is so truly expedient for a nation as to pursue

those courses which tend to the glory of God and the spiritual as well as the temporal welfare of mankind. By placing himself always on the right side in moral and religious ques tions, and pursuing a firm, enlightened, and temperate course of civil policy, he has it in his power, by the blessing of God, to effect much towards cementing the disunited elements of society, and promoting the best and lasting wel. fare of his country.

With great pleasure we record the adoption, by the Church Missionary Society, of a resolution which we are persuaded will tend largely to augment its resources, and to increase its efficiency and usefulness, without in any way altering its character. The resolution is merely that in case any question of eeclesiastical discipline shall arise, in which there shall be a difference of opinion between any colonial bishop and any committee of the Society, and respecting which no provision has hitherto been made by the Society, it shall be referred to the archbishops and bishops of the united church of England and Ireland, whose decision shall be final. The rule, it was also resolved, "is not to be so construed as in any other respect to alter the principles and practice of the Society, as they are contained in its laws and regulations, and explained in Appendix II. to the Thirty-ninth Report. As we shall take occasion to refer to the subject more in detail, we only for the present say that the rule is excellent in itself, as furnishing a mode of settling possible difficulties, in a manner convenient to all parties, and grounded upon church order and discipline, and it is also likely to be of great utility in removing some unfounded, but conscientious, scruples which have prevailed in the minds of some prelates and clergymen in regard to the operations of this excellent institution. Its old friends cannot love it better; but they will rejoice to with ness the accession of much valuable aid which it is likely to receive under the sanction of the Primate, the bishop of London, and other eminent dignitaries of the church, who had not previously expressed their approval of its constitution and proceedings. Some discussion arose at the meeting, which led to a full recognition of the scriptural, unalloyed, and truly Anglican principles upon which the Society is founded.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

L. J. N.; I. T. P.; H. H.; M. C. B.; Clericus; P.: G.; R. G.; L.; and several Constant Readers, are under consideration.

DR. CHALMERS'S SYNOPTICAL VIEW OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

T HOUGH I had read Dr. Chalmers's work upon political economy, at its publication in 1832, I had forgotten those important passages which you quoted in your last Number; the drift of which I take to be, that whatever may be right or wrong, expedient or inexpedient, in relation to mere political economy, there can be no true happiness or permanent prosperity in a land without the blessing of God; and that, as a means, there must be a moral and religious training of the people, and habits of temperance, diligence, and forethought. I have since referred to the book, and find its arguments so highly important, that I regret it is so little known; and that not even the attractive name of Dr. Chalmers has been able to secure its extensive perusal. I fear it has, according to the popular proverb, "fallen between two stools:" the political economists concluding that from such a pen it would only be a religious treatise in disguise; and religious readers being driven away by the secularity of political economy. If both classes would recur to the work, they would find that it has topics which ought to interest all who wish well to their country and to mankind; and both the friends and the enemies of Christianity would see that the true maxims of political economy are consistent with the statements of inspired truth. The author has analyzed his own work so ably, yet succinctly, that I could wish the summary were reprinted in your pages, as I cannot doubt it would greatly interest and instruct many of your readers.

B. B.

SYNOPTICAL view of dr. CHALMERS'S POLITICAL ECONOMY. "It has not been our object to deliver a regular system of political economy. It has been to establish the following specific proposition-That no economic enlargements in the wealth and resources of a country, can ensure aught like a permanent comfort or sufficiency to the families of the land. Followed up as these enlargements are, by a commensurate, or generally by an overpassing increase of the population-the country, while becoming richer in the aggregate, may continue to teem with as great, perhaps a greater, amount of individual distress and penury, than in the humbler and earlier days of her history. In these circumstances, the highway to our secure and stable prosperity is, not so much to enlarge the limit of our external means, as so to restrain the numbers of the population, that thay shall not press too hard upon that limit. But the only way of CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 45. 3 U

rightly accomplishing this, is through the medium of a higher self-respect, and higher taste for the comforts and decencies of life among the people themselves. It is only a moral and voluntary restraint that should be aimed at, or that can be at all effectual: the fruit, not of any external or authoritative compulsion, but of their own spontaneous and collective will. This is evidently not the achievement of a day, but the slow product of education, working insensibly, yet withal steadily and surely, on the habits and inclinations of the common people; begetting a higher cast of character, and, as the unfailing consequence of this, a higher standard of enjoyment; the effect of which will be, more provident, and hence, both later and fewer marriages. Without this expedient, no possible enlargement of the general wealth can enlarge the individual comfort of families; but, as in China, we shall behold a general want and wretchedness throughout the mass of society. With this expedient, no limitation in the way of further increase to our wealth will depress the condition, though it will restrain the number of our families; but, as in Norway, we shall behold the cheerful spectacle of a ⚫ thriving, independent, and respectable peasantry.

"But though our main object has been to exhibit such proofs and illustrations as may have occurred to us for the establishment of this position; and though we do not profess to have unfolded, in our volume, political economy, according to the forms and in the nomenclature of a science; yet a political economy, such as it is, may be gathered out of it. We may not have accom. plished the regular construction of a system, be it right or wrong, but we have at least furnished the materials of one; and we conclude with a brief exposition of its leading principles and peculiarities.

"1. The division of the labouring population into the agricultural, the secondary, and the disposable. It presents many new and important relations in the science of political economy. No ground will be cultivated, (unless by the interference of some artificial and compulsory legislation,) that it is not at least able to feed the agricultural population employed on it, and their secondaries. Hence the higher the standard of enjoyment is among the people at large, the greater will be the secondary, and the less will be the disposable class; or, corresponding to this, the greater will be the wages, and the less will be the rent, while, at the same time, the more limited will be the cultivation, because of the larger produce that will be required from the soil last entered on, to feed the larger number of secondaries.

"2. That the great aim of every enlightened philanthropist and patriot, is to raise the standard of enjoyment; even though it should somewhat lessen the rent, and somewhat limit the cultivation. That there must be less food raised in virtue of this narrower cultivation; and hence, a somewhat narrower society. But that this, with general comfort among the families, is vastly preferable to a more numerous society, with all the consequent miseries of an over-peopled

land.

"3. That there is no other method by which wages can be kept permanently high, than by the operation of the moral preventive check among the working classes of society; and that this can only be secured by elevating their standard of enjoyment, through the means both of common and Christian education.

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4. That however menacing an aspect the policy, whose object is to raise the condition of the working classes, may have on the interest of the landlords, by encroaching on the rent of land-yet they have every security for a great and growing revenue notwithstanding. Such, in the first place, is the strength of the principle of population, that there is no danger but wages will be kept sufficiently low, and cultivation be carried down among the inferior soils sufficiently far. And besides, every improvement in the methods of husbandry, by lessening the agricultural population needed for the work of farms-and every improvement in the powers of manufacturing industry, by lessening the population needed for preparing the second necessaries of life,-will serve to increase the disposable population who are at the service of the landlords, and, along with this, the rent out of which this third class of labourers is maintained. The improvements which are ever taking place in the powers of labour, will greatly more than countervail any diminution, effected by the moral check, on the number of labourers. Or, in other words, the standard of enjoyment may rise, and yet the income of landlords rise along with it. Human industry, aided by human skill, is ever becoming more productive; and, from this cause, if workmen will only assert and make good their own proper share of the increased produce, there are abundant means for the comforts both of the proprietors and of the general population being enlarged contemporaneously.

"5. That high wages are not necessarily confined to the period when the

wealth of society is in a state of progressive increase; and neither does it follow that, when this wealth has attained its maximum, and become stationary, the wages of labour must be low. That it remains in the collective power of labourers to sustain their wages at as high a level in the ultimate as in the progressive stages of the wealth of a country. That the moral preventive check on population can achieve and perpetuate this result; but that nothing else will do it.

"6. That in every country, where the laws are efficient and equitable, and the people are industrious, the cultivation of the soil will, under the guidance of personal interest and enterprise, be carried to the extreme limit of its being profitable. That, in these circumstances, to enter on a scheme of home colonization, (including spade-husbandry, cottage allotments, &c.) is to extend the agriculture beyond this limit; or, in other words, to enter upon soils which will not repay the expenses of their cultivation. That such a process can only be upheld by taxation, or by turning so many of the disposable population either into agrarians or secondaries. That the process reaches its ultimatum, when the last man of the disposable population, withdrawn from the preparation of luxuries, is converted into an agricultural or secondary labourer. That this implies a state of things, when the whole rent of the land is absorbed in the expenses of a pauperism now accumulated to the uttermost. That by the time when such a consummation is reached, and probably long before it, the land-owners, loosened from all interest or care in their estates, would abandon the administration of them. That when once the ties of property was broken, there would ensue an immediate dissolution of society. That the occupiers or labourers on the inferior soils, now deprived of the essential support which, through the medium of their proprietors, they drew from the superior ones, would turn, in violence, on the more fortunate occupiers of the better land. And finally, that, whatever temporary respite society might obtain from a scheme of home colonization, it is a scheme which, if persisted in, must have its final upshot in the most fearful and desolating anarchy.

"7. That this contemplation suggests two distinct limits-one, the extreme limit of a profitable, another, the extreme limit of a possible cultivation. That, by abstaining from schemes of pauperism, and, instead of these, giving the whole strength and wisdom of government to the best schemes of popular education, we shall keep within the former limit; and, with an untouched disposable population, whether for the luxury of proprietors, or for the public objects of a sound and enlightened patriotism, we may have, at the same time, the general population in a state of respectable comfort and sufficiency. But if, transgressing the former limit, we enter, with our home colonists, on unprofitable soils, and so make way towards the latter limit-from that moment, in thus making room for a larger, we are on the sure road to a greatly more wretched society than before; and degrade throughout the condition of the working classes, whilst we at once im poverish the landlords and enfeeble the state, by trenching on the disposable population.

"8. That no trade or manufacture contributes more to the good of society, than the use or enjoyment which is afforded by its own commodities; hence the delusiveness of that importance which has been ascribed to them, as if they bore any creative part in augmenting the public revenue, or as if, apart from the use of their commodities, they at all contributed to the strength or greatness of the nation; and hence, also, the futility of the common distinction between productive and unproductive labour.

"9. That although commerce re-acted most powerfully on agriculture at the termination of the middle ages, so as to introduce a new habit of expenditure among the landlords, and mightily to extend the cultivation of land-yet, now that the habit is firmly and fully established, we are not to imagine, though any given branch of trade or manufactures should be extinguished, that it will sensibly throw back the agriculture. For that no proprietor would let down the cultivation of his estate, because the failure or fluctuation of particular trades had placed beyond his reach some of his wonted enjoyments. That he would still be at no loss for objects on which to spend his income; and that, therefore, a large income would be as much his earnest aim and his felt interest as before.

"10. That there is, therefore, a misplaced and exaggerated alarm connected with the decay or the loss of trade. That the destruction of a manufacture does not involve the destruction of the maintenance now expended on manufacturers; and that the whole mischief incurred by such an event would be to them a change of employment, along with a change of enjoyment to their customers;

after which, we should behold, in every country subsisted by its own agricultural produce, as large a population as well maintained as before.

"11. That they are chiefly the holders of the first necessaries of life, or landed proprietors, who impress, by their taste and demand, any direction which seemeth unto them good, on the labours of the disposable population.

"12. Grant but industry and protection, and then capital will be found to have in it as great an increasing and restorative power as population has; and that any policy for fostering, or any fears for the decay of the one, are as chimerical as the same policy or the same fears in reference to the other; and that capital can no more increase beyond a certain limit than population can.

"13. That the diminution of capital, occasioned by excessive expenditure, whether public or private, is not repaired so much by parsimony, as by the action of a diminished capital on profits; and that the extravagance of government or of individuals, which raises prices by the amount of that extravagance, produces only a rotation of property, without any further diminution of it, than what arises from the somewhat higher rate of profit, which an increased expenditure brings along with it; and which higher rate of profit must, to a certain extent, limit the cultivation of land.

“14. That trade is liable to gluts, both general and partial; that no skilful distribution of the capital among particular trades, can save the losses which ensue from a general excess of trading; and that the result is the same, whether the undue extension has taken place by means of credit, or from an excess of capital.

“15. That the rate of profit is determined by the collective will of capitalists, just as the rate of wages is by the collective will of labourers-the former, by the command which they have, through the greater or less expenditure, over the amount of capital; the latter, by the command which they have, through their later or earlier marriages, over the amount of population. That by raising or lowering, therefore, the standard of enjoyment among capitalists, profit is raised or lowered; that, in this way, both classes may encroach on the rent of land, and share its produce more equally with the landlords.

"16. That when the agricultural produce of a country is equal to the subsistence of its population, its foreign trade is as much directed by the taste, and upheld by the ability, of its landed proprietors, as the home trade is.

"17. That it is not desirable that the commerce of Britain should greatly overlap its agricultural basis; and that the excrescent population, subsisted on from abroad, yield a very insignificant fraction to the public revenue.

"18. That, nevertheless, there should be a gradual relaxation of the corn laws, and ultimately a free corn trade-with the exception of a small duty on importation, for the single purpose of a revenue to government, by which to meet the expenses to which it is subjected, from the addition made by the excrescent to the whole population.

"19. That the abolition of their monopoly in corn would not be injurious to the British landlords; saving that the increase thereby given to the value of money, might create an inequality between them and the fund-holders-which inequality, however, could be rectified by means of an adjusted taxation.

20. That probably a free corn trade would not burden the country with a large excrescent population.

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21. That Britain has little or nothing to apprehend from the loss of her colonies and commerce-but that a change of employment to the disposable population, and of enjoyment to their maintainers, would form the whole result of it. And that though, historically, foreign trade did, at the termination of the middle ages, stimulate agriculture, yet that now, under all the possible fluctuations of trade, there is perfect security for the cultivation of land, on to that point at which it ceases to yield any surplus produce to the landlord.

"22. That, with the exception of their first brief and temporary effect on wages and the profits of circulating capital, and of their more prolonged effect on the profits of fixed capital-all taxes fall upon land; the interest of its mortgages being included.

23. That this doctrine, though now regarded as one of the exploded errors of the French economists, should not share in the discredit attached to their school-if upheld by other reasonings, and made to rest on other principles, than those of the economists. That the grounds on which our conviction in this matter is established, were never once recognised by these economists—that is, the dependence of wages on an element over which labourers, collectively, have the entire control-we mean population; and the dependence of profit on an element of which traders, collectively, have the entire control-we mean capital.