nation. This employment of foreign labour puts out of employment or precludes from employment an equal quantity of domestic labour, which, had it not been thus displaced or precluded from employment, would have saved to the nation not only the whole amount of what the cheaper labour has cost, but also the expense of supporting the domestic labourers. For the nation must support its own labourers, whether it employs them or not.

This reasoning, if it were to prevail, would put up a factory of almost every kind, in almost every town in the country. They have most of them industry enough, if well directed and put under proper municipal restrictions and regulations, to make for themselves all the necessary articles of life. Why, then, should out-of-town labour be called for and supported? Why should they live in this miserable state of absolute dependence upon other places, when they have the means of self-supply within their own limits? No matter how much cheaper the commodities may be procured elsewhere, the cost of it is, nevertheless, so much dead loss to the town. So much capital is thus removed from it; so much foreign industry thus receives that emolument, which might be invested for the benefit of those, whom the town is bound by every generous feeling as well by every principle of law and justice, to employ and support. Indeed, if this reasoning be pushed home, it must bring men back to the original savage state of individual independence, and destroy entirely the division of labour, of which commerce is only one of the higher branches.

The errors assumed in the above argument of our author are, that our industry is ill employed at home, and that capital goes abroad for the benefit solely of the foreign artisan. Whereas our industry is in fact most profitably at work; when it can do that which will command more, both the capitalist and the labourer will be glad to avail themselves of the chance, for there is profit then to be shared between them. And our capital does not continue to go abroad without receiving in advance, or bringing in return, a still greater amount of foreign capital for our use solely. We let our capital go for the support and employment of foreign labour! Why may not foreign nations accuse themselves also of the same folly? They send us their capital. They have sent us, indeed, a greater amount of it than they have received of ours, for our commerce with them has added immensely to our national and individual wealth. By this reasoning, they are thus growing poor for our benefit alone. They give support also to the poorest of our labourers. They furnish them not only with occupation, but with clothing and innumerable articles of comfort

and convenience, which have become now almost necessaries of life. Moreover, they are still so dependent on us, they expect from us so many materials, and so large a market for their commodities in exchange, that there is no danger of their cutting the tie which binds them to us, and telling us, we must for the time to come rely on our own resources alone. On which side then lies the obligation? But we did not intend to dwell upon such errors as this is. It makes part of that old, selfish system, of which we have heretofore spoken, and which is as ruinous to the nations that adopt it, as it is to those against whom it is aimed. We wish the advocates of this system would point us to one single able argument in defence of it. We have never yet

seen any.

But we have gone far enough. The sources of all the errors in the work before us, which is evidently written by a man of taste and talent, seem to be a want of respect for the opinions of others, and a want of care and patience likewise in the examination of them. Some one tells us, that genius is a great foe to philosophy. The reason assigned is, we believe, that it is impatient of control, and unwilling to labour; it seizes a position boldly, cannot stay to examine it,-drops it, and rushes on to new discoveries. We shall be glad to give the writer shelter under this flattering excuse, if our readers think he deserves it. But another trait, which we commonly find in the character of genius, is love and admiration of kindred genius; and of this, he has shown us no sort of proof. If he should accuse us likewise of being unduly severe, we might say to him, Decipit exemplar imitabile vitiis. He has set us the full example. If we have followed him, it is at an immeasurable distance. We have remarked already the unqualified nature of these "Observations." Not even a compliment escapes the writer of them; not a passing tribute of praise or commendation of any kind is wrung from him. He is the only one of the many unsparing critics upon Smith particularly, who seems to treat him as if he were totally destitute of merit. Nor is this all. There is sometimes a sneer, and a tone of sarcasm running through his strictures, which we hardly know how to pardon. A single instance of this;

Mr Say says, that "A full grown man is an accumulated capital." (II. 75, note.)

The prodigal, if full grown, is then an accumulated capital. Mr Say considers capital one of the sources of production. Prodigality must, then, according to him, be capital productively em

ployed. Capital he also calls an agent of production. In that case, the prodigality of a full grown man must be the productive agency of capital!

This forms one whole "Observation " Observation" on Say's Treatise. Now, reader, is it not a little too much in the old Dennis style of critique? What is worse, too, is it not utterly destitute of merit as an argument, if indeed it could be ever designed as such? Say's idea is, that the expense of feeding, and clothing, and educating a man is in the nature of vested capital. But where does he tell us of capital of any kind, which must always be productive? It is in fact, often wasted and misspent, and made the instrument of ruin in every way, and such, we say, is the fate of the talents and the acquirements of the prodigal. If it be the metaphor in which the idea is expressed, that our author thinks "injurious to the welfare of our country," he is off the field of political economy, where alone we proposed to meet him. Perhaps he may be rhetorically right. We have no Blair by us to try the question.

Still we bate nothing from the recommendations of these severe strictures, with which we set out. They will interest and engage the student. Moreover, unless we are greatly mistaken, he will rise from the perusal of them with a much higher respect for the merits of Smith and Say, than if he had read these distinguished authors alone. It must, indeed, require a good deal of power to stand uninjured against such determined, and, in some cases, such well managed attacks, as they are here called upon to sustain. But it is only into the hands of those, who are actually engaged with Smith and Say, that we could wish these "Observations" to fall. One reason is, that they do not always fairly represent the views of these writers. Another is, that they partake a little too much of the character of the author's "Summary;" some of them are very compendious and general, and cannot be easily understood alone. If he had confined them to a few important questions started in political economy; if he had enlarged fully on these questions; if he had pointed out to us what particular profitable branch of commerce, or manufacture, or agricultural interest, or domestic industry of any kind, has been, or may be paralyzed by the great leading principles of Smith and Say, supposing them to be in full, efficient force, as it seems they threaten soon to be; if, passing by the many little errors he thinks he has discovered, he had taken up two or three of the inquiries, which we have here pointed to, or similar ones, and gone fully into them, and given us a well wrought

argument in support of his own thoughts on the subject, he would then have employed his discriminating mind to some valuable purpose. This book would have been useful by itself and alone. He might thus also have sometimes convinced us, that he was right, or what seems much more probable to us of course, he might have convinced himself that he was wrong.

One word more upon this subject, and we have done. The writer tells us, that the governors of Harvard College "deserve much commendation for causing instruction to be given in a science so important to be generally understood, and hitherto so little studied, as the nature and causes of national wealth." And yet "it is to be regretted, that a treatise so exceptionable in its principles and arrangement as Mr Say's, should be put into the hands of students, whom it would be better to leave uninstructed than to fill their minds with pernicious errors." And again he speaks of it, as "a book confused in its arrangemant, mistaken in fundamental doctrines, and teaching opinions prejudicial to the welfare of our country." Now here lies our difficulty. Will the "Friend of Domestic Industry " have the goodness to give us his advice, and help us out of it? What substitute shall the enlightened governors of our University put into the hands of their pupils for the text-book now in use? No modification of the works of Smith or Say will answer, for they both are virtually the same; "the principles of Mr Say are essentially those of Adam Smith," and those principles are wrong, dangerous, pernicious. Where, then, are we to look for one? All those which we are acquainted with, of any talent or merit of any kind, are deeply imbued with the errors and prejudices of those most popular writers. What is to be done? Shall the scholars give up the pursuit for want of a safe guide to conduct them in it?

MISCELLANY.

THOUGHTS ON MILTON.

[We fear there is a little too much severity in some of the following strictures on the character of Milton. We give it a place in order that those who are not disposed to pay any great veneration to his memory, may have a fair hearing.]

A COMBINATION in the same individual of the different talents for successful composition in poetry and prose, may be claimed as a characteristic of our own times. It has been familiarized to us in so many instances among later English authors, especially in certain of our distinguished contemporaries, that we half forget it is of comparatively recent exhibition, and apparent in few instances before Dryden and Pope. These exemplified alike both styles of writing, and still retain in both an elevated rank; while among their immediate predecessors, the Essays of Cowley have long survived his Lyrics, and the Epic of Milton has been read by multitudes, who have suffered his "Treatises,' "Tractates," and "Tenures," to rest undisturbed among "literary sods." From this decent burial, however, there has not been wanting inclination to disinter them; and once and again the spirit of party, civil and religious, has attempted their revival. According to the different creeds of the respective critics-as churchmen or dissenters, royalists or republicans-have these writings alternately been lauded or lampooned; but as neither friendship nor enmity, which sometimes accomplish the same end by opposite means, has ever succeeded in rendering them popular, we are warranted in suspecting an inherent disqualification. For the third time the experiment is renewed, in consequence of the newly discovered "Treatise on Christian Doctrine;" and the number of elaborate disquisitions it has occasioned, reminds us of a curiosity in the archives of the Massachusetts Antiquarian Society, consisting of half a score of manuscript books of commentary upon the single book of Revelation! All admit the Treatise of Milton to be of little moment, either to the memory of its author, or the edification of the community; yet as all unite, also, in making it the occasion of announcing their own sentiments on his life and opinions, the writer of this article, too, may follow the fashion of the day.

There is no paradox in asserting that the poetic genius of Milton, even had it been acknowledged at the first, as ever after, would have been considered rather a hindrance than a help to his pretensions as a political economist. The provinces of the two, indeed, seem no less asunder than the heavens and the earth; and St John, in the Isle of Patmos, fresh from the inspiration of that