white wines of Malaga were worth about sevenpence a gallon before the disease; they are now worth about two shillings. Old Castille and Aragon are equally prolific-wine being in some places more abundant than water, insomuch that instances are known of the bricklayers using it to mix their mortar. The disease has now ceased in Spain, and in consequence of the great extent of vineyards planted in that country during the last three years, the market is likely to be overstocked with wine for some time to come.

*

We have then an incalculable amount of wine-a vast and increasing area of cultivation-and a price of production which in comparison with anything known in this country is fabulously low. Let us now contrast these facts and figures with the state of the wine trade and the consumption of wine in the United Kingdom. Whilst the use of every other article of food or luxury has largely increased (including, we lament to say, the use of spirits), that of wine alone has fallen off: and it is not too much to assert that there is no product of nature or of the art of man, generally diffused through the world and acceptable to our taste, which is so little used or enjoyed by the people of England as wine. They draw tea in abundance from China, sugar from the West Indies, tobacco from America, food and fruit from every part of the globe; but wine, and especially those wines which France and Spain produce in such abundance, have lain under the interdict of our laws, because 5s. 9d. a gallon was, in reality, a tax of 300 or 400 per cent. on the bulk of the supply. What is the result? Our total consumption of wine was actually less in 1858 than it was in 1791, though our population has doubled in the interval. The proportion drunk, which was only two bottles and a half per annum to each person in 1791, has still further declined to one bottle and a half: that is the present average. This fact demonstrates that to the majority of the population of the United Kingdom, the use of wine is practically unknown. The revenue derived from wine may be said to have remained stationary, and for an obvious reason: as the high duties only let in the highest class of wines which cannot either materially increase in quantity or diminish in price, the supply could not be augmented. To meet a large and popular demand a totally different article will appear in the market. Our present total consumption is 6,748,975 gallons; of which the consumption of French wine has risen in 1859 to one tenth. The consumption of wine by our neighbours the French is sixty

* Mr. Lumley's Report, p. 38.

VOL. CXI. NO. CCXXVI.

Y

six times as much as our own; it amounted in 1854 to 396,000,000 gallons. M. Chevalier thinks a Frenchman drinks about one hundred times as much wine as an Englishman. On the other hand we consume six times as much beer as the French, and twice as much of spirits. Were the people of the United Kingdom only to drink a quantity of wine equal to the quantity of spirits now consumed by them, the revenue at one shilling a gallon on wine would be equal to that obtained by the 5s. 9d. duty. When we consider the immense supplies which are at hand the moment we cease to exclude them by prohibitory duties, not only from France but Spain and Portugal, the extreme lowness of price-the wholesome and acceptable nature of wine when it is obtained pure and used in moderation-and the gross absurdity and injustice of shutting out from a whole nation one of the best gifts of Providence to mankind by an excessive tax, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion that the reduction of the wine duties is a measure of the utmost utility, and that far from causing any permanent sacrifice to the Exchequer, wine, at a low duty, will take its place amongst the ten or twelve principal permanent sources of the customs' revenue.

We call ourselves Free-Traders; we boast of having opened the markets of this country to the produce of the world; we are proud of having removed the burdens which restricted the food of the people. But can any nation on the face of the earth produce a more excessive and absurd prohibition than this, which excluded altogether every kind of wine, except those for which none but the wealthy can afford to pay? We are astonished at the stupid infatuation of the French who reject our iron-of the Spaniards who prohibit our manufactures. But is it not the fact that the commodity of all others which these nations produce in the greatest abundance, and which is best adapted for trade and use in foreign countries, is precisely that which our laws have forbidden us to consume? We do not dwell upon the argument of reciprocity, because we are fully aware that to a people really convinced of the truth of the doctrine of Free Trade, such an argument has no force. But to countries and governments at the stage of economical science which the French and Spaniards have lately reached, this argument has very great force, and we do not see why it should not be employed. We certainly desire on every account that foreign nations should be led to abandon those prohibitions and restrictions which we know to be equally injurious to themselves and But our arguments and our example in other respects were powerless, as long as the British tariff was disgraced by a duty of 5s. 9d. on wines worth to the growers as many pence.

to us.

The more liberal admission of the other products of southern Europe was comparatively insignificant in its results, so long as the grand staple of the vineyards was excluded.

On these grounds more especially we think that the combined measures submitted to Parliament by Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues, in the shape of the Commercial Treaty with France and the reductions of his Budget, reflect the highest honour on that statesman and on the Government, and we are satisfied that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have no .cause to regret that he has dealt in a liberal spirit with the resources of this country, and with the industry of our great neighbour.

The establishment of freer and more extensive commercial relations between the populations of two great, rich, and neighbouring empires involves considerations of a far more lasting and comprehensive character than the diplomatic transactions of the day. If the people of France and the people of England find it to their mutual advantage to import foreign commodities and to dispose of their own produce under the provisions of this Treaty, or by legal enactments adopted in connexion with it, interests will spring up eminently favourable to the pacific relations of the two states, and superior to those political changes which from time to time alter the condition of the world. If, on the contrary, this Treaty were by any mischance so framed as to give to either nation an undue and mischievous advantage over the other, far from being a pledge of peace, we should regard it with apprehension and alarm. The basis on which it rests is, however, broad and secure. It has been, it will yet be, assailed by every form of class interests, of national prejudices, of protectionist fallacies, and even by the hypercriticism of the straitest sect of free-traders; but, upon the whole, we are content to stake the future relations of England and of France, upon which the peace and welfare of the whole world largely depend, upon this great trial. The abolition of the Corn Laws was not carried without a storm in our internal policy, which broke up parties, overthrew ministers, and threatened at times considerable dangers; the abolition of the prohibitive system in France and the removal of the last restrictions in our own tariff, is an undertaking of scarcely less moment to the general commercial policy of the world; and we place the courage and confidence which dare to move boldly onwards to great results infinitely above the timid and make-shift policy which circumscribes the conduct of the nation within the bounds of temporary expediency, and would sacrifice to the tranquillity and convenience of the present the best hopes of the future.

"

ART. II. 1. The Life of John Milton, narrated in connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By DAVID MASSON, M.A., &c. Vol. I., 1608-39. 8vo. Cambridge and London: 1859.

2. An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, with an Introduction to Paradise Lost.' By THOMAS KEIGHTLEY. 8vo. London: 1859.

3. The Poems of John Milton, with Notes by THOMAS KEIGHTLEY. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1859.

4. Original Papers illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Milton, including sixteen Letters of State written by him, now first published from MSS. in the State Paper Office. Collected and edited by W. DOUGLAS HAMILTON. Printed for the Camden Society. 1859.

R. MASSON'S volume has many sterling merits and some serious defects. His industry is immense; his zeal unflagging; his special knowledge of Milton's Life and Times extraordinary; and when he does not copy the vices of Mr. Carlyle's diction, his style is manly, easy, and picturesque. But the radical fault of his narrative is its plan; and as this affects the whole of his present volume, and may affect equally its promised successors, we will state our objections to it, before proceeding to comment upon the goodly, though somewhat tedious octavo before us. The Life of Milton might well be written again Johnson's prejudices, Todd's dulness, and Symmon's rhetorical pomp, are alike unworthy of the subject. But to connect the political, ecclesiastical, and literary History of 'his Time' with Milton's personal history is to build a labyrinth of digression and episode, for which it is scarcely possible to furnish a sufficient clue. From the maze, indeed, of Mr. Masson's excursions on politics, church-government, and literature, Milton himself is continually disappearing. If he be not hid with excess of light, he is often buried beneath excess of matter. a rock invisible at spring tide, like a city overgrown by its suburbs, Milton's place and person are often lost through hundreds of pages in Mr. Masson's narrative, and the bewildered reader is driven to ask on what pretext he is thus shrouded from view. Milton was neither soldier nor statesman. For the first thirty years of his life he was a secluded scholar: for the last portion he dwelt in deep retirement, his only companions a faithful few, mourning like himself over the disappointment of their hopes, but lifting neither hand nor voice against the strong sons

Like

6

of Zeruiah. The longest interval that can be assigned to Milton as a public man, dates from his first controversial pamphlet On 'Reformation in England,' printed in the early part of 1641. The first letter which he wrote in his official capacity as Secre'tary for Foreign Tongues to the Council,' is dated March 1648-9, and this, strictly speaking, was the inauguration of his public career. Hardly a sixth part of his life in the one case, hardly a fourth in the other, was devoted either to polemical or political eloquence, and what he wrote besides, being for all time, is as independent of the causes and circumstances of the great Rebellion as Grotius's treatise De Veritate Christianâ' of the Thirty Years' War.

Since Mr. Masson's volume appeared, the Camden Society has further elucidated Milton's life and official career by the publication of various documents, and among them sixteen 'Letters of State' hitherto unprinted. They have been excellently edited by Mr. W. Douglas Hamilton, and will prove a valuable auxiliary to Mr. Masson when he enters on the second period of his Biography. The new letters confirm all previous impressions of Milton's command of the Latin tongue, and of the eloquence, energy, and dignity he gave to the political despatches of the Commonwealth, especially when the subject (as in the case of the persecution of the Vaudois by the Duke of Savoy) touched his own love of freedom and truth. But Mr. Masson has given too much importance to Milton's office as Secretary of Foreign Tongues. His duties more nearly resembled those of the Clerk of the Council than those of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. There is nothing to show that he was consulted by the Council at first, or by Cromwell afterwards, upon their general or occasional policy. His official duties were confined to clothing in vigorous Latin their minutes and diplomatic instruments. He was the fittest man of the time, in virtue both of his principles and his scholarship, to vindicate the freedom of England on the seas, to protest against the cruelty of the Duke of Savoy, and to expound to Europe the high argument between the King and People of England. In every other controversy of the time, except that great debate, and the assertion of his country's right to arrest the career of persecution, Milton was a volunteer, and nearly as often in opposition to the government as in its service. He early threw off the shackles of Puritanism: he scandalised both godly ministers and laity by his Doctrine of Divorce; and though he panegyrised the Protector and the Independents, both in prose and verse, his adherence to them was more that of an ally than a partisan. While his countrymen were debating whether Cromwell should be king, or Charles Stuart be recalled, or whether