Nov. 1780.

"I can hardly bring myself to write under the severe blow which we have lately experienced, to the news of which, my dear Pretyman, you are probably not a stranger. You will, I know, be anxious to hear from me. I wish to say as little as possible on the melancholy subject, too melancholy indeed for words. I have to regret the loss of a brother, who had every thing that was most amiable and promising, every thing that I could love and admire; and I feel the favourite hope of my mind extinguished by this untimely blow. Let me, however, assure you, that I am too much tried in affliction not to be able to support myself under it; and that my poor mother and sister, to whom I brought the sad account yesterday, have not suf fered in their health, from so severe a shock. I have prevailed on them to think of changing the scene, and moving towards Hayes, which is a great comfort to me, as the solitude and distance of this place must now be insupportable. I imagine that we shall begin our journey in a few days. Adieu. You shall hear from me soon again. Your's most sincerely, and affectionately, W. PITT." I. 26, 27. "Hayes, Sunday, July 17, 1774.

"Need I tell my dear William that his letter, received this morning, diffused general joy here? To know that he is well and happy, and to be happy ourselves, is one and the same thing. I am glad that Chambers, Hall, and tufted Robe, continue to please; and make no doubt, that all the nine, in their several departments of charming, will sue for your love with all their powers of enchantment. I know too well the danger of a new amour or of a reviving passion, not to have some fears for your discretion. Give any of these alluring ladies the meeting by day-light, and in their turns; not becoming the slave of any one of them; nor be drawn into late hours by the temptation of their sweet converse. I rejoice that college is not yet evacuated of its learned garrison; and I hope the governor of this fortress of science, the master, or his admirable aides-de-camp the tutors, will not soon repair to their respective excursions. Dr Brown, to whom I desire to present my best compliments, is very obliging in accommodating you with a stable. I hope with this aid Mr Wilson's computation may not be out above one-half, to bring it at all near the mark. I conclude, a horse's allowance at Cambridge is upon the scale of a sizar's commons. However it prove, I am glad to think you and he will find more convenience for riding at every spare hour that offers. Stucky will carry Mr Wilson safely, and, I trust, not unpleasantly. The brothers of the turf may hold the solid contents of his shoulders and forehand somewhat cheap; but by Dan's leave, he is no uncreditable clerical steed. No news yet from Pitt. James is here the flower of schoolboys. Your loving father,

СПАТНАМ. "”

"Hayes, Sept. 2, 1774.

"I write, my dearest William, the post just going out, only to thank you for your most welcome letter, and for the affectionate anxiety you express for my situation, left behind in the hospital, when

our flying camp moved to Stowe. Gout has for the present subsided, and seems to intend deferring his favours till winter, if autumn will do its duty, and bless us with a course of steady weather; those days which Madame de Sevigné so beautifully paints, des jours filés d'or et de soye.

"I have the pleasure to tell you, your mother and sisters returned perfectly well from Bucks, warm in praises of magnificent and princely Stowe, and full of due sentiments of the agreeable and kind reception they found there. No less than two dancings in the short time they passed there. One escape from a wasp's nest, which proved only an adventure to talk of, by the incomparable skill and presence of mind of Mr Cotton, driving our girls in his carriage with four very fine horses, and no postillion. They fell into an ambuscade of wasps more fierce than Pandours, who beset these coursers of spirit not inferior to Xanthus and Podarges, and stung them to madness; when, disdaining the master's hand, he turned them short into a hedge, threw some of them, as he meant to do; and leaping down, seized the bridles of the leaders, which afforded time for your sisters to get out safe and sound, their honour, in point of courage, intact, as well as their bones; for they are celebrated not a little on their composure in this alarming situation. I rejoice that your time passes to your mind, in the evacuated seat of the Muses. However, knowing that those heavenly ladies (unlike the London fair) delight most, and spread their choicest charms and treasures in sweet retired solitude, I won't wonder that their true votary is happy to be alone with them. Mr Pretyman will by no means spoil company, and I wish you joy of his return. How many commons have you lost of late? Whose fences have you broken; and in what lord of the manor's pond have any strays of science been found, since the famous adventure of catching the horses with such admirable address and alacrity? I beg my affectionate compliments to Mr Wilson, and hope you will both beware of an enclosed country for the future. Little James is still with us, doing penance for the high living so well described to you in Mrs Pam's excellent epistle. All loves follow my sweetest boy in more abundance than I have time or ability to express." I. 26, 27.-19-22.

We have left ourselves no room to enter upon the controversy between the Bishop and Mr Adair, if controversy it may be called, Ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum.' But we shall have great pleasure in returning to Mr A.'s most able, spirited, and satisfactory exposition of his antagonist, at an early opportunity.

ART. XI. 1. Numbers I. and II. of Essays on Money, Exchanges, and Political Economy. By HENRY JAMES. London, 1820. 2. Speech of Matthias Attwood Esq., M. P. on the Bank Cash Payments Bill, April 9, 1821.

3. A Series of Tables, exhibiting the Gain and Loss to the Fundholders, arising from the late Fluctuations in the Value of the Currency from 1800 to 1821. By ROBERT MUSHET Esq., Second Edition. London, 1821.

To To make any direct alteration in the terms of the contracts entered into between individuals, would be a degree of barefaced oppression, and tyrannical interference with the rights of property that could not be tolerated. Those, therefore, who have hitherto endeavoured to enrich one part of society at the expense of another, have found it necessary to act with greater caution and reserve. They have not, indeed, relinquished their purpose; but they have been obliged to substitute the cunning of the practised cheat, for open and avowed injustice. Instead of directly altering the stipulations in contracts, they have ingeniously bethought themselves of altering the standard, by a reference to which these stipulations had been adjusted! They have not said, in so many words, that 10 or 20 per cent. shall be added to, or deducted from, the mutual debts and obligations of society; but they have really effected the same thing, by making a proportionable change in the value of the currency. Men, in their bargains, do not stipulate for signs or measures of value, but for real equivalents. Money is not merely the standard, by a comparison with which the relative value of commodities is ascertained at any given period; but it is also the equivalent, by the delivery of a fixed amount of which, the stipulations, in almost all contracts and agreements, may be discharged. It is plain, therefore, that no variation can take place in its value, without essentially affecting all these stipulations. Every addition to the value of money must make a corresponding addition to the debts of the State, and of every individual; and every diminution of its value must make a corresponding diminution of these debts. Suppose that, owing to an increas ed difficulty of production, or to an increase in the quantity of bullion contained in coins of the same denomination, the value of money is raised 20 per cent., it is plain that 20 per cent. is, in consequence, added to all the various sums, in which one part of society is indebted to the other part. Though the nominal rent of the farmer, for example, is not increased by this

means, his real rent is increased: he continues to pay the same number of pounds or livres as formerly; but the pound or livre is become more valuable, and requires the sacrifice of one-fifth part more of corn, of labour, or of any other commodity whose value has remained stationary, to obtain them. On the other hand, had the value of money fallen 20 per cent., the advantage, it is plain, would have been all on the side of the farmer, who would have been entitled to claim a discharge from his landlord, when he had paid him only four-fifths of the rent he had really bargained for.

But, notwithstanding it is thus obviously necessary, in order to prevent the pernicious subversion of private fortunes, and the falsifying of all precedent contracts, that the standard of money, when once fixed, should be religiously kept inviolate, there is nothing that has been more frequently changed. We do not here allude to those variations which affect the value of the material of which the standard itself is composed, and against which it is impossible to guard; but to the changes which have been made in the quantity of that material contained in the same nominal sum of money. In every country in Europe, debtors have been thus enriched at the expense of their creditors. The necessities, or the extravagance of Princes, have forced them to borrow; and, in order to relieve themselves from the incumbrances they had contracted, they have almost universally had recourse to the disgraceful expedient of degrading the coin; that is, of cheating those who had lent them money to the extent of the degradation, and of enabling every other debtor in their dominions to do the same. In England, for 234 years after the Norman Conquest, a pound in money was also a pound in weight; or, which is the same thing, a pound weight of silver was coined into 20 shillings. In the reign of Edward I., the standard was, for the first time, changed: and, having been once violated, it was gradually debased, until, in 1601, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 62 shillings were coined out of a pound. This was a reduction of above two-thirds in the standard; so that all the stipulations in contracts entered into in the reigns immediately subsequent to the Conquest, might, in 1601, and since, be legally discharged, by the payment of less than one-third of the sums that had been really bargained for. And yet the standard has been less degraded in England than in any other country. In France, the livre, or pound in tale, contained, in the reign of Charlemagne, precisely a pound weight of pure silver; but, by successive degradations, it contained, at the commencement of the French Revolution, only 4th of an ounce, or one seventy-second part of a pound of silver. In Scotland,

the pound weight of silver, which had, previously to 1296, been coined into one pound, or 20 shillings, was, in 1601, coined into thirty-six pounds, or 720 shillings. The Spanish coin, called a Maravedi, which, in 1220, weighed 84 grains of gold, and, of course, must have been worth about 14 shillings of our present money, is now become a small copper coin, equal only to about of an English penny!

The principle of degradation has not, however, been uniformly acted upon. The quantity of bullion contained in coins of the same denomination, has sometimes, though rarely, been increased, and creditors enriched at the expense of their debtors. This method of swindling his subjects is said to have been first resorted to by Heliogabalus. The Roman citizens being bound to pay into the Imperial treasury, not a certain weight of gold, but a certain number of pieces of gold, or aurei, the Emperor, whose vices have become proverbial, in order to increase his means of dissipation, without appearing to add to the weight of the taxes, increased the quantity of metal contained in the aureus; and thus obtained, by a dishonest trick, what it might have been difficult for him to have obtained by a fair and open proceeding. * In France, the value of the coins has been frequently raised. During the early part of the reign of Philip le Bel, who ascended the throne in 1285, the value of the coin had been reduced to such an extent, as to occasion the most violent complaints on the part of the clergy and landholders, and generally of all that portion of his subjects who could not raise their incomes proportionably to the reduction of the value of money. To appease this discontent, and in compliance with an injunction of the Popes, the King at last consented to issue new coins of the same denomination with those previously current, but which contained about three times the quantity of silver. This, however, was merely shifting an oppressive burden from the shoulders of one class to those of another who were less able to bear it. The degraded money having been in circulation for about sixteen years, by far the largest proportion of the existing contracts must have been adjusted exclusively with reference to its value. No wonder, therefore, that those who were in the situation of debtors should have declared their repugnance to submit to so shameful an act of injustice as was done them

*Lamp. Vita Alex. Severi, cap. 39.-Perhaps Heliogabalus took the hint from Licinius, a freedman of Cæsar's, who, in his government of the Gauls under Augustus, divided the year into fourteen months instead of twelve, because the Gauls paid a certain monthly tribute ! Dion Cassius, lib. 72.