May not the same also be said of those portions of the prophecies in which the style is so peculiarly elevated, and the language highly figurative and poetical? As to the historical parts of the prophecies, also, we conceive that these require so vast a fund of previous knowlege, before they can be rendered intelligible, that we can scarcely imagine Mr. Stanley's system to be applicable here to any but very enlightened minds.

In imprinting on the memory, however, the leading facts both of the Old and the New Testament, the work will doubtless have its utility. We commend also the plan of leaving the learner himself to search for the solution of the question, since it teaches him to exercise his own judgment, and prevents the mere recital of a prescribed form of words. At the same time, this mode increases the responsibility of the teacher, and imposes on him a more arduous task. - Prefixed to each book, is a short notice of its contents, of its author, and of the period in which he lived. As the work is yet only in its infancy, we cannot but express our earnest hope that the author will be encouraged to proceed in his design, which has our sincere good-wishes.

POLITICS.

Art. 30.
The Speech of Pascoe Grenfell, Esq. in the House of
Commons, 13th February, 1816, on certain Transactions sub-
sisting betwixt the Public and the Bank of England. With an
Appendix. 8vo. pp. 120. 4s. 6d. Murray.

Those who have patience to study financial statements are
doubtless already acquainted with the substance of this speech,
from the report of it in the news-papers: but it is here printed at
greater length, and with more accuracy. Its chief recommend-
ation, however, consists in the tables and other documents that
form the Appendix. They are partly specifications of the large
balances of public money deposited at the Bank, partly extracts
from the correspondence of ministers with the Bank-Directors, and
partly passages from the evidence of witnesses examined before
parliamentary committees. The speech, with these additions, makes
an useful appendage to the collection of a grave student of finance:
but the general reader will do well to give a preference to other
topics, and keep at a wary distance from the subject which pos-
sesses so many charms in the eyes of some politicians.

Art. 31. The Crisis; or a Letter to the Right Honourable the
Chancellor of the Exchequer; stating the true Cause of the
present alarming State of the Country, with a Remedy at once
safe, easy, and efficacious: the whole deduced from unerring
Principles. 8vo. pp. 86. 3s. 6d. Hatchard. 1816.

Hapless indeed would be the situation of the members of our
cabinet, were they doomed to wade through all the literary pro-
ductions that are addressed to them! We have no reason for sup-
posing, however, that they often attend to such advisers; and,
though the writer of the tract before us has aimed at a double hold
on ministers, his pamphlet being dedicated in the outset to Lord
Liverpool, while the body of his reasoning is addressed to Mr.Van-

sittart,

sittart, we can by no means flatter him with the expectation of unusual success. " Our present difficulties,' he says, are not the effect of our financial burdens, but of our inaptness to view common facts in their true and proper light.' The remedy which he proposes is nothing less than that of making the pound note a legal tender at the reduced value of fourteen shillings; a notion founded on the assumption that, at one particular time, our bank-paper had become depreciated to that extent. He would even go a step farther, and claim for the agriculturist an abatement of forty-five pounds in every hundred, on the plea that the loss sustained by him in capital since the peace gives him a just title to this sweeping indemnity.

Art. 32. Thoughts on the Causes and Consequences of the present distressed State of agricultural Produce. Addressed to the Consideration of those who have Property in the Funds. 8vo. 6d. Longman and Co. 1816.

The leading object of this little tract is to warn the stock-holders against considering the distress of the agricultural interest as a matter of indifference to them in a pecuniary point of view. Our land is the atlas which supports the world of our taxation; and where is the political Archimedes that can find another resting-place for the lever, by which it may be raised? The public creditor may continue for a short time, as at present, to absorb the capital, instead of receiving a proportion of the annual income of the country, but he can have no golden eggs when the bird that laid them is destroyed.' The manner in which the fall of the value of corn reduces the produce of taxes is very clearly explained in pp. 9, 10. In his suggestions of a remedy, the author is evidently less luminous and satisfactory: but a potent deduction from our taxes by appropriating the sinking fund to our current expenditure is evidently in his contemplation. As a composition, this little essay has a mixed character, containing some irrelevant and even injudicious passages, united with occasional remarks (as in p. 13.) that would do credit to a deliberate and experienced investigator.

Art. 33. An Address to the Honourable House of Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, on the State of the Nation. By a Yorkshire Freeholder. 8vo. Is. Longman and Co. 1816. This Yorkshire gentleman seems determined not to be outdone by any of his cotemporary writers in sturdy allegation or confident demand. Now that we are restored to a state of peace, he computes the labour of the men withdrawn from the military service, and employed in mines, fisheries, and manufactures, at the moderate sum of four pounds a-week; and, by way of setting in motion thris great addition to the productive industry of the country, he proposes that Government should make extensive loans to countrybankers, and come forwards for their protection in all cases of an alarm or run: while our salvation, he says, will depend on our giving the same public protection to paper-currency in peace as in war. Such arguments evidently proceed on the notion that our distress consists merely in a want of the circulating medium; and,

as we are of opinion that many other matters are to be taken into consideration, we must decline any farther notice of the lucubrations of this northern politician.

Art. 34. Speech of Henry Brougham, Esq. M. P., on the 9th of April, 1816; in the Committee of the whole House, on the State of the Agricultural Distresses. 8vo. pp. 61. 2s. 6d. Longman and Co.

We need scarcely observe to the political reader that this discourse is equally remarkable for the compass of the information displayed, and for the calmness and moderation that pervade the whole. We see here no disposition to strain a particular argument, or to support a favourite theory; on the contrary, authorities on either side are quoted with respectful deference; while the orator takes, on several occasions, a line of reasoning materially different from that of the persons with whom he is in the habit of coinciding on other topics.

Mr. B. commences by explaining the unusual stimulus given to our manufactures, and consequently to our agriculture, by the acquisition of foreign colonies in the war of the French Revolution. This was followed by a farther premium to cultivation in the high prices consequent on the scarcities of 1795, 1799, and 1800; the operation of which took place in a variety of ways, and in none more effectually than in facilitating loans to farmers and small proprietors through the hands of country-bankers. The public, both on this and the other side of the Tweed, were long under the delusion that the new purchasers of land were the unincumbered proprietors of their splendid acquisitions; while, in fact, they seldom paid more than the partial sum necessary to render the estate a tolerable security to the mortgagee. What else than distress was to be expected from the fall in the price of corn that was consequent on a peace, and on a reduction in the quantity of bank-paper, particularly when the general distrust excited by repeated failures induced, and, in many cases, forced the mortgagees to foreclose their deeds and bring their property to sale? All this distress, moreover, took place under an enormous increase of taxation.

The latter half of the speech (after p. 40.) is given to the more doubtful topic of the means of affording relief. Mr. B. differs from several political economists with regard to the expediency of the corn-bill of the last year; being decidedly of opinion that nothing short of protection to the scale adopted (eighty shillings per quarter) could save the landed interest from almost universal ruin. He coincides, however, with all enlightened writers on the principles of commerce, in condemning Mr. Western's proposition of a bounty on the export of corn; a measure which could not be carried into effect without a great increase of taxation, and which would answer scarcely any other purpose than that of enabling foreigners to consume our corn cheaper than ourselves. — In adverting (pp. 50, 51.) to the often-agitated questions of tythes and poor-rates, he expresses a hope of suggesting, on a future day, a plan likely to be productive of considerable relief: but his expectation

pectation of direct assistance is founded on a partial appropriation of the sinking fund, and a consequent relinquishment of the taxes that press most on agriculture, such as those on leather and husbandry-horses; to which he would add the bad gains of the lottery,' and the most oppressive of the assessed taxes. He concludes by recommending to parliament, or rather to ministers, an active protection of the new branches of trade that are opened with Spanish America; a trade carried on at present to a considerable extent, but in little else than a contraband form, without the sanction of consuls or residents, either commercial or political.

Without attempting any farther summary of the great variety of topics introduced into this speech, we shall merely add that it gives by no means a discouraging picture of our national prospects; so that it has probably brought Mr. B. into favour with many who had become dissatisfied with the frequency of his opposition to ministers, and had adopted the ordinary (though by no means just) conclusion that such conduct implies a disposition to under-rate the power and resources of our country.

Art. 35. Letters on the present State of the Agricultural Interest, addressed to Charles Forbes, Esq. M.P. By the Rev. A. Crombie, LL.D. 8vo. pp. 86. Hunter.

Dr. Crombie formerly engaged our attention as a philologist, and now comes before us in a minor publication in the capacity of a political economist. He manifests a considerable acquaintance with the principles of that science; and the chief defect in his composition is the want of a clear and careful distribution of the materials. He adverts successively to the various causes of the great alteration that has occurred of late years in the condition of the agriculturists; particularly the unusually large crops of 1812, 1813, and 1815; the large importations in 1814; the cessation of government-purchases for the army and navy; and, finally, the reduction of the bank-issues. He combats with great propriety the proposition of a bounty on the export of corn; as well as the equally obnoxious project of a duty on the import of foreign wool. He next discusses the effect to be expected from a mitigation or repeal of direct taxes on agriculture, and explains in what way the benefit arising from that source is more likely to go to the landholder than to his tenant. Now the former, it must be confessed, have flourished so largely since the year 1792, as to have no particular claim on the indulgence of the mercantile and other branches of the community.

While most other classes of the community were depressed, the land proprietor rose; his capital was improved, and his revenue increased. In evidence of this, we have only to compare the value and rent of land during the last twenty years with what they were at the commencement of the war. If he should now have his revenue reduced to the same amount as in 1792, his condition would not be worse than that of the national creditor who invested his money in the funds at that period.'

The

The remainder of the pamphlet consists of a recommendation of long leases; of the adoption of corn-rents, somewhat on the plan lately practised in the payment of clerical livings; and of a general reduction of rents in those counties, unfortunately too many, in which the land-holders have gone beyond all reasonable bounds in their bargains with their tenants. Farmers are, or rather were till lately, ill prepared to adopt the plan of regulating their rent, even to the extent of one half, by the price of corn; alleging that high prices occur only in the case of deficient crops, which would oblige them, as they apprehend, to pay a high rent in a bad season: but this might be obviated by adopting, as a standard, not any particular year, but an average of five years; and in fact their objections have, in several cases, been overcome. We have, indeed, little doubt of their giving way as soon as they shall be satisfied that the plan in question is not intended for their disadvantage.

Dr. C. concludes by advising a new modelling of the present mode of tything; an equalization of the poor's rates, so as to make the maintenance of the poor the duty of the whole community; and, finally, the repcal of the existing statute against usury. His observations on the last topic, brief as they are, bespeak a mind that has gone considerably into the subject; and they will be found perfectly to accord with the various arguments that we endeavoured to urge in treating this important and ill understood subject, in our report of Mr. Sugden's tract on redeemable annuities. (Rev. Vol. lxxi. N. S. p. 426.)

Art 36. An Inquiry into the Cause of the Increase of Pauperism and Poor's Rates; with a Remedy for the same, and a Proposition for equalizing the Rates throughout England and Wales. By William Clarkson, Esq. 8vo. pp. 77. Baldwin

and Co. 1815.

The distress of the agricultural interest is now likely to make our legislators proceed to the adoption of various measures which ought to have engaged their attention long ago; - among others, to a new-modelling of the poor-rates, on the plan of equalizing them throughout the kingdom. Mr. Clarkson contributes his mite to this object, with very little skill as far as literary composition is concerned, or even the humbler task of conveying his ideas in clear language, but with the benefit of considerable familiarity with the subject; so that his pages contain occasionally an useful document, which the student of political economy may note, and turn to account in his comparative statements and reasonings. E. G.