special field for increased trade and production will be found; and that is the very field in which supplies of the precious metals are most needed. China, although opened to the knowledge of the West, still remains secluded from the commerce of the world; and probably the development of the trade with China will be a more remarkable and advantageous feature of the new epoch than that of India has recently been. So vast a change from the ancient régime of isolation cannot be accomplished suddenly; despite the most favourable conditions of Chinese policy and legislation, so vast an Empire can only be opened to commerce gradually; but when the four hundred millions of the Chinese nation freely become part of the trading community of the world, the field of commerce will be as greatly widened as if a new continent had been discovered.

The broad features of the present commercial position were ably stated by M. Léon Say a few months ago. Speaking of the great project of public works for the purpose of developing the resources of France-the projected network of railways and canals, combined with improved harbours for foreign trade -the Minister of Finance said at Calais in September last :

'If you take a glance at the economical history of our century, you will see that it is divided into several periods, which correspond, each of them, to a space of time about twenty-five years. You have all seen the extraordinary development of trade and commerce during the past twenty-five years. It is evident to me that we are now at the end of this third period. There is a kind of preparation in the world for a change, a renewal; the world is unwell. We are witnessing a stoppage in the general consumption, and perhaps great changes in the routes of commerce. The crisis through which we are passing is universal. It exists on the other side of the Channel and across the Atlantic, and, if we could pierce through the terrestrial globe, we should find the same crisis at the Antipodes. Happily, illnesses do not last; otherwise humanity, which has so often suffered, would exist no longer. We are, therefore, about to enter on a fourth period; and it is the duty of the Government, as it is the duty of the great manufacturers of this country, to prepare everything so as to make our entrance advantageously. We require tools to work with; we must prepare to develope more and more our relations with the different nations of the globe. They who think that a country, nowadays, can shut itself up belong to another century. To-day we are in the midst of a crisis, of a fall of prices, and some persons are going about saying we shall never get out of it. But take courage: let us pass through our present trials with energy, and rest assured we shall get out of them some day.'

How long the present depression of trade may last, no one can say; but, so far as is indicated by existing circumstances, there is not likely to be any fall in the value of gold. Indeed, the indications point the other way. Since the trade of the

world has vastly expanded since 1860, while the gold-supply has in the interval greatly declined, and at present, if not slightly declining, at least shows no sign of increase-it may reasonably be inferred that the value of gold will rise when trade resumes its normal rate of progression. But, as already explained, when gold (or the standard money of any country) becomes scarce compared with the requirements of trade, the mercantile community soon learns to regulate its operations accordingly, keeping them within profitable limits; and in so far as this takes place, there will (except momentarily) be no rise in the value of money. In fact, there may be a potential rise in the value of gold without any actual or established rise as shown by general prices. But anyhow, whenever a scarcity of gold makes itself felt, the change will operate first upon the loanable portion of money; in other words, it will cause a rise of the Bank-rate.

But

But although we hold, as must be seen from the foregoing observations, that an ample supply of gold is an essential condition of the trading activity of the world, and that it tends to promote that activity, it certainly does not cause it, when other and more powerful causes are in abeyance. At this moment we have before our eyes the singular spectacle of the vaults of the Bank of England gorged with 32 millions of gold coin and bullion, a sum exceeding the total issue of banknotes now in circulation, notwithstanding the depression of trade; indeed, the gold is probably there because there is at the present time no adequate commercial demand for it. this is a state of things that cannot last. In all parts of the world, even in Europe and America, and still more in China and India, there is a great want of metallic currency; and in proportion as China abandons her exclusiveness, and commerce penetrates the interior of that vast and populous country, a further and long-lasting drain of specie to the East will certainly ensue, relieving the Western world of its accumulating stock of gold and silver. It is worthy of notice that one important cause of the cessation of the enormous fall in the value of money after 1640 was the newly opened trade with Asia. The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope gradually led to the establishment of a sea trade with India, while the cessation of the intolerant rule of the Saracens in Southwestern Asia permitted the Venetians and others to carry on a land trade through Syria and the valley of the Euphrates. It is needless to say that gold and silver have now immensely vaster means of diffusing themselves than in the old times, while the requirements of the East for the precious metals are

probably as great as ever. But it is only through international trade that these wants can be satisfied. However great may be the requirement of many countries for a metallic currency, or for specie generally, such wants can only become effective through the operations of international commerce and finance. A specie-requiring country, like India or China, must make its exports of merchandise exceed not only its imports of merchandise, but also the amount of its national indebtedness, before it can obtain permanent additions to its stock of the precious metals, whether for currency or for the ornaments so greatly in vogue among Eastern peoples. But it is especially in this specie-requiring branch of industryviz., international trade that the progress of the future lies, and in which the doubtless impending revival of production will seek an outlet.

ART. VIII.—1. William Cobbett: a Biography. By EDWARD SMITH. London: 1878.

2. Selections from Cobbett's Political Works. By JOHN M. COBBETT and JAMES P. COBBETT. In six volumes. London: 1835.

3. Rural Rides. By WILLIAM COBBETT. New Edition. London: 1853.

MR. R. EDWARD SMITH Would have succeeded better as a biographer had he admired his hero less, and appreciated him more. Cobbett was the best abused man of his generation. Mr. Smith has sought to redress the wrong done to his merits by accepting his own estimate of his demerits. Happily a biographer of Cobbett is compelled to draw upon Cobbett himself for facts. If a biography is to be an apology, it is well to have the defence at first hand. In Mr. Smith's volumes Cobbett for the most part speaks for himself. Mr. Smith has sifted an autobiography out of a library of dead political controversies. Praise is due to him for the affectionate industry which the work throughout displays. The more is it to be regretted that the comments in which Cobbett's own remarks are set should be very frequently more generous than just to him, and neither just nor generous to his opponents. A less heinous, but at the same time less tolerable, offence is Mr. Smith's singular diction. The master of a style rapid, pointed, and bright, is travestied by a running fire of observations oracular and grandiloquent. Paragraphs start with sentences in which a participle is the only verb. A system of punctuation

is adopted which is always springing a colon or a semicolon on the reader. Humour is supposed to be displayed in describing the Prince Regent as the first gent.' Generally language and thought alike execute contortions in which Cobbett himself would have found a richer treasure of grammatical warnings than in his whole collection of king's English.

Mr. Edward Smith's faults of manner and judgment will not be without their use if they induce his readers to turn from him to the shelves on which repose the forgotten volumes of the Political Register.' There only can their extraordinary editor be properly studied. In tracing Cobbett's character the historical enquirer will find that he is tracing, as he no otherwise could, the innermost meaning of English politics from the war of the French Revolution to the first Reform Act. Not a measure was debated in Parliament, not a treaty was negotiated in the Foreign Office, but Cobbett claimed to assist as the self-appointed representative of English popular rights. He seated himself like a Roman tribune by the senate doors, and protested if he could not veto. The student of Cobbett is led by him into the recesses of national policy and individual character. His criticisms of acts and motives are often as far as possible from being equitable or right. Anyone who obediently followed the Register's' estimates of public transactions and public men would soon find his political principles in a whirl. Cobbett does not solve political problems-far from it ; but his blunders are more instructive than the wisest answers. If he does not bring down his birds, he is, at any rate, an incomparable pointer for showing where they are lying. Over all the long strife which issued in the Act of 1832 he interposes his own passionate personality. His astounding egotism is like quicksilver for its power of blending with all, and separating into its several elements whatever it touches. A first introduction to the hundred volumes of Peter Porcupine' and the Weekly Political Register' may inoculate the student with the writer's own belief that in an age of bloodthirsty Jacobins, overreaching Americans, and jobbing or stolid Englishmen, William Cobbett was the one incorruptibly wise and fearlessly benevolent politician. That sentiment will be evanescent with natures less emotional than that of Mr. Edward Smith. When, however, the hero has ceased to be one to his reader, the time spent in studying him will yet not seem to have been lost. The curiosity aroused by the idiosyncrasies of an individual character will be not unwillingly transferred to the social and political enigmas which a perfect self-confidence convinced Cobbett that he alone had the wit and the integrity to guess.

Cobbett had the self-made man's fondness for describing the steps of his rise, and a born writer's art of narration. In every pamphlet he penned there are touches of the most vivid autobiography. His origin and early life he related to prove to American controversialists that, if he attacked democracy, it was from no prejudices of aristocratic blood or associations. It is delightful to think of Cobbett finding it necessary to demonstrate that he was not reared a gentleman. His grandfather had worked for one employer from the day of his marriage to that of his death, upwards of forty years. His father was a Farnham farmer, who had raised himself from the grade of a day labourer. He had learned some mathematics and land-surveying. What he knew he taught his children. Still more of their schooling was in the fields. Cobbett declared he never remembered the time when he did not earn his living. His father used to boast that his four boys, from fifteen years of age downwards, did as much work as any three men in Farnham parish.

When the supply of farm employment failed, William Cobbett worked in the Bishop of Winchester's gardens at Farnham Castle. That led to an experience which gave his tastes a curiously anticipatory bent towards controversial literature. A gardener fresh from Kew Gardens, by his account of their horticultural splendours, fired the imagination of the lad of eleven. Next morning, without a word, he started for Kew with sixpence halfpenny for his fortune. Twopence spent on bread and cheese, a penny on small beer, and a halfpenny lost, brought him to Richmond with threepence in his pocket for supper and lodging. His eyes suddenly fell on a little volume in a bookseller's window, Tale of a Tub,' price threepence. He spent his board and lodging on the book with the odd title. So impatient was he that he sat down by the side of a haystack and began to read. A boy could not understand it all; but perhaps the mystery was not the less suggestive. He said himself in after years: It produced what I have always considered a birth of intellect.' He read on till it was dark, and then slept in the hay. In the morning he resumed his walk to Kew, where the gardener, a Scotchman, gave him work for some weeks or months. The Tale of a Tub' became a sort of Bible to him. His little copy perished with a box which fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy. The loss,' he wrote, 'gave me greater pain than I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds.' This was Cobbett's introduction to something beyond a village schoolboy's idea of liteHis first ideas of politics came from his father.

rature.

His