number of cattle which had been given in exchange for them. In all countries, however, men seem at last to have been determined by irresistible reasons to give the preference, for this employment, to metals above every other commodity. Metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any other commodity, scarce any thing being less perishable than they are; but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided into any number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily be reunited again; a quality which no other equally durable commodities possess, and which more than any other quality renders them fit to be instruments of commerce and circulation. The man who wanted to buy salt, for example, and had nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, must have been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, or a whole sheep, at a time. He could seldom buy less than this, because what he was to give for it could seldom be divided without loss; and if he had a mind to buy more, he must, for the same reasons, have been obliged to buy double or triple the quantity; the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occa

sion for.

Different metals have been made use of by different nations for this purpose. Iron was the common instrument of commerce among the ancient Spartans; copper among the ancient Romans; and gold and silver among all rich and commercial nations. Those metals seem originally to have been made use of for this purpose in rude bars, without any stamp or coinage. The use of metals in this rude state was attended with two very considerable inconveniencies; first, with the trouble of weighing; and, secondly, with that of assaying them. The weighing of gold in particular is an operation of some nicety. The operation of assaying is still more difficult, still more tedious. Before the institution of coined money, however, unless they went through this tedious and difficult operation, people must always have been liable to the grossest frauds and impositions; and instead of a pound weight of pure silver, or pure copper, might receive in exchange for their goods, an adulterated composition of the coarsest and cheapest materials; which had, however, in their outward appearance, been made to resemble those metals. To prevent such abuses, to facilitate exchanges, and thereby to encourage all sorts of industry and commerce, it has been found necessary, in all countries that have made any considerable advances towards improvement, to affix a public stamp upon certain quantities of such particular metals, as were in those countries commonly made use of to purchase goods. Hence the origin of coined money, and of those public offices called mints; institutions exactly of the same nature with those of the alnagers and stampmasters of woollen and linen cloth. All of them are equally meant to ascertain, by means of a public stamp, the quantity and uniform goodness of those different commodities when brought to market.

The inconveniency and difficulty of weighing metals with exactness gave occasion to the institution of coins; of which the stamp, covering entirely both sides of the piece, and sometimes the edges too, was supposed to ascertain not only the fineness, but the weight of the metal. Such coins, therefore, were received by tale as at present, without the trouble of weighing.

The denominations of those coins seem originally to have expressed the weight or quantity of metal contained in them. In the time of Servius Tullius, who first coined money at Rome, the Roman as, or pondo, contained a Roman pound of good copper. It was divided in the same manner as our Troyes pound, into twelve ounces; each of which contained a real ounce of good copper. The English pound sterling, in the time of Edward I., contained a pound, Tower weight, of silver, of a known fineness. The Tower pound seems to have been something more than the Roman pound, and something less than the Troyes pound. This last was not introduced into the mint of England till the 18th of Henry VIII. The French livre contained, in the time of Charlemagne, a pound Troyes weight, of silver of a known fineness. The fair of Troyes, in Champaign, was at that time frequented by all the nations of Europe; and the weights and measures of so famous a market were generally known and esteemed. The Scots money pound contained, from the time of Alexander I. to that of Robert Bruce, a pound of silver of the same weight and fineness with the English pound sterling. English, French, and Scots pennies too, contained all of them, originally, a real pennyweight of silver, the twentieth part of an ounce, and the two-hundredth-and fortieth part of a pound. The shilling too seems originally to have been the denomination of a weight. When wheat is at twelve shillings the quarter, says an ancient statute of Henry III., then wastel bread of a farthing shall weigh eleven shillings and four pence. The proportion, however, between the shilling and either the penny on the one hand, or the pound on the other, seems not to have been so constant and uniform as that between the penny and the pound. During the first race of the kings of France, the French sou, or shilling, appears upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient Saxons, a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies; and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same as at present, though the value of each has been very different.

It is in this manner that money has become, in all civilized nations, the universal instrument of commerce; by the intervention of which goods of all kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another.

ON POPULAR LAW.

No. I.

BEYOND the necessary attention to daily wants and domestic comforts, there is nothing can be so interesting to the great body of the people as a summary knowledge of the duties which they owe to the State, in return for the protection which it affords, and of the relative obligations which they are bound to discharge towards each other as members of one large family. From a conviction that this species of knowledge is as important as its enjoyment is beneficial, we shall devote a few of our pages occasionally to the explanation of those laws by which a good subject is required to measure his conduct, and which tend to his own peace and the public welfare. Certainly, to know what is right is the best security against doing wrong; and though an instinctive love of justice, strengthened by the principles of religious education, may afford protection against violent aggressions, yet there are faults of commission and omission, which become so from the habits of society, and which must not be permitted in him who aspires to the character of a virtuous and estimable man. It is one of the beneficent ordinations of Providence that the maxims of selfgovernment are founded in self-interest; and that he who regulates his life according to the precepts of morality is sure to gather, as he proceeds, the richest harvest of happiness. The Constitution of Great Britain is established on the same basis: the mighty architects of our liberties and our glory have laid their foundations in the depths of the human heart; securing the stability of the edifice, by drawing around it even the least worthy of our affections, and dispensing similar rewards to those who practically venerate this matchless structure of civil polity. An ignorance of the real character of our civil establishments, and the advantages we enjoy above all other countries on the globe, produce a susceptibility to popular excitement, which a more comprehensive acquaintance with the blessings held out to us by the Constitution would restrain and subdue, lest in the struggle to confirm an imagined improvement, a solid benefit in possession should be sacrificed. Surely, then, a simple and candid exposition of the nature of our institutions, and the general spirit of the laws which direct and control our conduct as fellow-citizens and subjects, may tend to cherish habits of political discretion in general affairs; and of diligence, fidelity, and zeal, in all the observances of social life.

That the region upon which we are about to enter is extensive and has many intricacies cannot be denied; but still there are broad and prominent distinctions to direct the way: and we trust that the objects which we shall have to point out and descant upon, as we proceed, may be presented in those forms and embellishments which shall recommend the investigation to our readers; for whose benefit we thus employ our leisure. It will be possible, without following all the

windings of legal enactment on any particular subject, to give such an outline of the whole, such an exhibition of principles, as may be easily remembered, and if acted upon will furnish ample protection against positive crimes or constructive offences; for the jeopardy into which men sometimes fall is to be attributed to their want of better information, rather than to wilful depravity or practised delinquency.

It may afford some amusement, if not instruction, to glance at the origin of our form of government, and trace its progress, in as few words as possible, through past ages, down to the present period. The Aborigines, or earliest inhabitants of this island, had made no very considerable advances from original barbarism, when they were visited, for the first time, by the more polished people of ancient Rome. The invaders, however, having subdued the greater part of the country, disseminated the peaceful arts among the vanquished, and taught them how to create and secure to themselves fresh comforts. But the repulsive spirit of independence would not permit our progenitors to mingle into one common nation with those whom they regarded as intruders; and from the same feeling, their minds, like the frozen earth, were in some measure closed against the seeds of instruction thrown among them. In process of time new colonies were planted by adventurous Saxon chiefs; who, having exhausted their military employments at home, among the German states, sought the indulgence of their ambition on the shores of Britain; to which they were invited, as allies against the conquerors, by the impatient people. These new friends soon established themselves in sovereignty over the kingdom; and their manners and customs bearing a near affinity to the ancient usages of the land, an amalgamation of the whole into one people was more readily effected. Many of the principles of our Constitution date their practical operation from this period; particularly our legislative and judicial systems, with the regulations of police and local government. But a country so beautiful in its general aspect, and rich in its resources, could not fail to excite the desire of conquest among the itinerant princes of the north; who, like the captains of Arabia, led their followers to fresh districts when the old ones would supply them no longer with subsistence without the labour of cultivation. The energies of the people, which had been squandered and dissipated for centuries in internal wars and commotions, were at length collected into one form of government by the great and renowned Alfred, who transmitted the regal sceptre to his descendants; till William Duke of Normandy, strengthened by the pretext that the crown had been devised to him by a former possessor, entered the kingdom with a numerous army, and seated himself upon the throne. His heroic companions were rewarded for their assistance by the transfer of certain portions of land into their absolute possession; over which, and the vassals who tilled it, they maintained an authority as complete and despotic as that which the King himself exercised in those districts retained to his own use. Hence arose the feudal system, with all its degrading impositions upon personal free

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dom, from which the country was gradually relieving itself, till the Revolution in 1688 swept away all that remained which was inconsistent with the more enlightened views of political science, and the more rational sentiments of general liberty, of modern times.

9

The great palladium of British freedom is her Parliamentary System, which arose in the wants of the Monarch, and is now the sinews of his strength and the safeguard of the national prosperity. In the earlier periods of our history, when the Saxon institutions obtained a footing among us, it was the practice for the King to call together the majority of his people, for the purpose of deliberating upon the means of providing for the exigencies of the State. In a short time afterwards those only were summoned whose wisdom and rank might best entitle them to the distinction; and they were assembled under the name of the Wittenagemote, or Meeting of the Wise Men, upon every public emergency. They were, however, confined in their functions to the granting of supplies of men and money for carrying on the wars in which the nation might be engaged; and sometimes they were required to confirm the decrees of the Crown in matters relating to internal government; which scarcely needed their sanction to give the regal mandate the full force and consistency of law. The conflicts between aristocratical and monarchical tyranny, which distinguished this era, were attended with the happiest results to the liberty of the subject. The Monarch granted new privileges to the people, to strengthen them, as his allies, against the overgrown power of the barons; and the barons, in their turn, extorted from the Monarch new rights and immunities to be enjoyed by the whole community. Thus were struck out, from the collision of opposing despotisms, those popular principles of government which have been the admiration and the imitation of other nations. As society improved and population increased, it was found that the meeting of so many in Parliament as had been customarily required to attend, was exceedingly inconvenient to the subject, and presented no counteracting advantages to the State; the representative system was therefore invented, and is an admirable contrivance for continuing to the people the right of making their own laws, without the trouble and neglect of their private affairs consequent upon a personal attendance. The sentiments of every part of the kingdom are thus collected into a focus; and the interests of every class may be explained and protected by those whose business it is to study the general welfare, and to make those acquisitions in knowledge and information which shall best qualify them for the important duties of statesmen and legislators. It is not necessary to point out the remote period when the great council of the nation was first divided into two houses-the Lords and the Commons. As is well known, the members of the first held their seats by descent; the latter by the will of the people alone; who can displace them at the end of seven years if they find them unworthy. The number of the Peers is unlimited; the King having the power of ennobling any of his faithful servants whom he pleases with this distinction: but the mem