Seventeen pages are filled with lines of this description. Is it from too little grace, or from a too refined taste, that we cannot applaud such kind of verse?

The volume concludes with the Cottager's Hymn,' the first stanza of which is as follows:

Mr. Brontë courts not the favour of critics; and so far he is right, because critics and he cannot be on good terms.

Art. 17. The Minstrels of Winandermere, a Poem. By Charles Farish, B. D., Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, and late Lecturer of St. Cuthbert's, Carlisle. Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d. Boards. Cadell and Davies. 1811.

These poems are preceded by a long rambling dedication to Richard Clarke, Esq., the Chamberlain of London, in which Mr. Farish not only leads his friend over the neighbourhood and antiquities of Chertsey, (Mr. Clarke's residence,) but makes him follow from room to room at Cambridge,' to witness the resiliency' with which a proposal for tolerating marriage in the Universities was received,

The Minstrels of Wimandermere' are supposed to be a set of school-boys; and the supposition may be admitted without difficulty, These young gentlemen recite various poems on the traditions and scenery of Cumberland: but the lines are so crouded with hard names and local allusions, that it is impossible for persons who have not visited the Lakes to understand them. The following stanza, on the effect of rocky fragments falling into the water, is thoroughly ori ginal:

While the moon resting on the Scaw,

Far o'er Wast-water laid her beam,

Which at the plunge trembled ; loud kaw
Th' awaken'd birds with fearful scream.'

A part of the picture of Furness Abbey is in the same taste:
There Furness all dishevelled sits,

Beneath full many a kawing tree.'

The ensuing lines are, however, much better:

• The hands

Of time here shew capricious sway:
'Tis his triumphal arch that stands,

In this light state of strange decay.'

The description of Edith's singing (p. 79.) is well imagined ; and the poem itself is a sort of versified Itinerary, which may prove an amusing and useful companion on a northern tour.

BULLION-QUESTIO N.

Art. 18. Speech of the Right Honourable Lord King, in the House of Lords, 2d July 1811, on the second reading of Earl Stanhope's Bill respecting Guineas and Bank-notes. 8vo. pp. 48. 2s. 6d. Ridgway.

Lord King may be considered, in some measure, as a veteran among the writers and speakers on the subject of bullion. He begins by dividing his speech into two parts, the first of which is a vindication of his individual conduct; the second, a general disquisition on the state of our currency. In justification of his notice of last summer to his tenants, to pay their rent in specie, or in notes at a discount, he argues (p. 5.) that the depreciation of bank-paper has been progressive and alarming during the last twelve years; and that the vote of the House of Commons on the Report of the Bullion-Committee amounts to a declaration, on the part of government, that the restriction is to continue during the whole of the war, In giving us a copy (p.7.) of his well-known letter to his tenants, his Lordship mentions that it was addressed to those only whose leases were of several years standing; and that his rule of conduct was to require payment in a currency which possesses an equal value now with that which it bore at the date of the lease. Calculating the quantity of gold which the amount of rent would have purchased at the time of the conclusion of the agreement, he now calls on his tenants to pay him this sum, either in specie or in notes sufficient for the purchase of specie. Where,' he asks, is the hardship of this demand? The price of corn, the price of labour, the prices of every great staple commodity, are all augmented by the state of the currency. The covenants of a lease secure the payment of rent in the lawful money of Great Britain, and on every principle of law and equity, the landlord is intitled to receive the intrinsic value of the stipulated sum.' The gross produce of a farm is generally supposed to be divided into four shares, three of which go to expences, taxes, and farmer's profit, while the remaining fourth forms the rent. The mode of fixing a rent is to estimate the fourth of the produce at the average price of several preceding years; of course, if the farmer's receipts are augmented by the fall of money, the amount of his rent should receive a correspondent augmentation. Now the average price of wheat, which for a period of thirteen years preceding 1785 was forty-six shillings a quarter, and for a similar period prior to 1797, fifty-two shillings, rose, in the third period ending in 1810, to more than seventy-one shillings. An advance of rent regularly takes place at the end of a lease; and his Lordship sees no reason why it should not be enforced during its continuance.

REV. JAN. 1812.

H

Having

pay

Having thus justified himself personally, the noble speaker proceeds to discuss the question on national grounds. Of the ninety millions which now form the sum of our vast annual expenditure, he computes that ten millions are required in consequence of the state of our currency. Our supplies for the army, the navy, the ordnance, in short our expences at home, with the exception of the interest due to the public creditors and a part of the of the public servants, are augmented in the ratio of the fall of money. In Portugal and Sicily, the loss incurred by the fall of the exchange is not less than twenty per cent. on the amount of our remittance, -Adverting next to the consequences of the invasion of Spain by Bonaparte, his Lordship remarks that the bullion, which formerly flowed into Europe through the medium of Spain and Portugal, now finds its way through this country. Gold accordingly is cheaper among us, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, than it is in France and other parts of the continent to which it is afterward exported. If we look back to the history of the French Revolution, we find, says his Lordship, a lasting admonition against making paper a legal tender; the effect of which has been to cause a discontinuance of leases in many parts of France, and, when granted, they are generally made payable in corn. In this country, have already appeared symptoms of a reluctance to renew leases for a length of term; a reluctance from which, if it continues, the worst consequences to our agriculture may be apprehended. His Lordship adds, with reference to his individual conduct, a notice (p. 34.) of no small im portance; namely, that he is willing to pay as well as receive on the plan of an indemnifying allowance for the fall of paper-money. To facilitate calculations of this kind, he has fubjoined tables of the gradual decrease in the value of notes, and the intrinsic value of money-contracts at different stages in the history of depreciation.

In this, as in former publications, Lord King discovers a thorough acquaintance with the subject. Those who study his earlier productions will find in them the materials of several of the arguments developed in the Report of the Bullion-Committee; and we are induced by a perusal of the present speech to recommend to less accurate writers an imitation of his Lordship in one respect, we mean in the care with which he never fails to distinguish between the fall of paper from non-convertibility and from a cause of a different nature; taking steadily as his rule for computing the former, the rise in the marketprice of gold-bullion above its coinage-price.

1812.

Art. 19, An Appeal to Common Sense, on the Bullion-question. By a Merchant. 8vo. pp. 69. 25. Richardson. In common with the majority of his brethren in trade, this merchant is a declared enemy to the doctrines conveyed through the medium of the Bullion-Report; and, like a true practical man, he suspects that the possession of general knowlege constitutes rather a disqualification than an advantage, in such an inquiry as that which engaged the attention of the Committee. This, we confess, is a new idea to us. Other parts of his charge against the Committee, such as their acting under preconceived impressions, and their bias in regard to the interpretation of the evidence, have been repeatedly

urged

urged in former publications. After several preliminary animadversions, the author fairly enters the lists with Mr. Huskisson, and maintains, (p. 1o.) in contradiction to that genleman, that the disappearance of our gold has been caused by the balance of international payments being against us. He even goes so far (but in this we can by no means agree with him) as to assert (p. 14.) that the circumstance of our currency being in paper, and non-convertible paper too, has no effect on the state of the exchange. More accurate views are expressed in a subsequent passage; in which the author declares, in contradiction to Mr. Huskisson, that bullion, or, to speak generally, the precious metals, must form the ultimate means of liquidating balances between different countries. He is a warm admirer of the work of Mr. Hill; (reviewed by us in Vol. Ixiv. p. 278.) and he cannot help expressing great regret that a senator of the talents and integrity of Mr. Wilberforce should take an active part in support ing the new doctrine of Messrs. Horner and Huskisson. Either,' says he, Mr. Wilberforce had never thoroughly investigated the question, or he must have been influenced by undue predilection, through the well turned and high-sounding sentiments so diligently sent abroad by Mr. Huskisson."

Following other writers on the ministerial side of the question, this author insists (p. 46.) on reckoning the present market-price of bullion as a proof not of the fall of paper, but of the rise of gold; and he even allows himself to contemplate a continuance of a similar enhancement of gold with reference to silver. One of the accusations most frequently urged by him against Mr. Huskisson is that gentleman's considering gold in the same light, whether in the shape of coin or in that of bullion. Another and a more serious one is the use (p. 59.) which the enemy may make, (or, if this author be correct, already has made,) of the publication of Mr. Huskisson, in disseminating far and wide a knowlege of its contents. After some keen animadversions on that head, this Merchant' brings to a conclusion his own pamphlet; which is one of the most verbose that has of late fallen into our hands, and may be said, like the Brehon law of the Irish, to contain "a proportion of good with a much larger one of bad."

Art. 20. Reflections on the possible Existence and supposed Expedience of National Bankruptcy. By Peter Richard Hoare, Esq. 8vo. PP. 76. 45. Cadell and Davies. 1811.

Mr. Hoare has been one of the most voluminous writers on the subject of bullion. We reviewed in July last an "Examination of Sir John Sinclair's Observations" which bore his name, and we now find that he was the author of an anonymous pamphlet intitled "A Letter containing Observations on some of the effects of our Paper-currency," which was noticed in our Number for December 1810. (p. 435.) The remarks which we applied to these his earlier productions will be found to hold in a great measure with regard to the present; which, like them, is a performance of a mixed character, dwelling frequently on false positions in a tone of too much confidence, and discovering at other times no inconsiderable share of information and ability. The principal reason for Mr. Hoare's

H 2

coming

coming a third time before the public was to corroborate his former argument, that it is from excess of currency that the high price of the necessaries of life has chiefly, if not altogether, proceeded. The amount of our currency, when it consists of paper, ought not, he says, (p. 6.) to exceed what would have been its amount if in coin, and never would have exceeded it had paper been always convertible into cash. Having laid down this fundamental proposition, in which we have no difficulty in agreeing with him, he goes into a variety of enumerations on the increase of town and country-bank notes, and arrives at a conclusion to which we can by no means give our concurrence, namely, that the amount of our circulating medium is now trvice as great as before the Bank-suspension. It is no wonder if, with such impressions regarding the increase of notes, he is disposed to go no farther in quest of the causes of the rise of provisions. A state of war can, in his opinion, scarcely be called instrumental in producing this enhancement; in support of which he presents us (page 18.) with a table of the price of wheat in Windsor market, as given in the 14th Volume of Young's Annals of Agriculture. This table extends from the year 1700 to 1810, and is a very useful document: but the author forgets that it is only within these forty-years that we have been under the necessity of depending on foreign supplies of corn. It is since that period that the increase of our popula tion has outstripped the increase of our produce, and made us sensible of a material difference between peace, which opens to us the agricultural stores of our neighbours, and war, which withholds them. Now Mr. Hoare is so intent on proving that our currency has increased without cause, that he doubts (page 22.) whether in late years any material addition to our population has taken place; a subject on which he would have written differently, had he ascertained before publication the particulars of the return lately submitted to Parlia ment. We hope, also, that he is mistaken in another point, though on this we speak with less confidence; we mean, in denying that any additional comfort in the condition of the lower orders has been produced. If, however, we hesitate to contradict him in this opinion, we need have no doubt in regard to another topic, his assertion (p. 26.) that the augmented issue of bank-paper has impeded the extended cultivation of arable land.-In the midst of these errors, we have occafionally the satisfaction of finding a well-founded if not a novel remark, such as (page 18.) that many of our manufactures have been cheapened by improvements of machinery more than they have been enhanced from other causes, and that the fall in our colonial produce has been owing to a too rigid enforcement of the monopoly-system.

It

In calculating the effect of our taxes on the price of commodities, Mr. Hoare persists, as in his former pamphlet, (M. R. Vol. lxiii. P. 435.) in denying that they have any considerable influence. was long,' he says, (p. 29.) our policy to avoid whatever taxes might affect the wages of labour: but he finds it necessary to add an essential qualification, and to express his fears that we are gradually deviating from this course.' It is amusing to see with what pertinacity he dwells on augmentation of paper-money as the sole cause of the enhancement of commodities. Butcher's meat he dis