of the Emperor, kept him in continual uneasiness, merely by the utterance of a few words once deemed of spiritual potency in earth and heaven. In the days of Napoleon's humiliation and decline, we see how clearly this admirable judge of human nature discovered the remaining hold, which these words and the ancient prejudices of the almost divine sanctity, spiritual power and inviolability of the Pope had upon men's minds. One of his first acts, under those circumstances, was to retrace his steps in relation to the Pope, by making such concessions and retractions, and such demonstrations in his favor, as tended to conciliate him, and procure the spiritual aid of his favor and benediction.

Conversations on Political Economy. By the author of Conversations on Chemistry. Adapted to the use of schools. By the Rev. J. L. BLAKE, A. M. Bowles & Dearborn: Boston, pp. 330.

THE reader will hardly need to be informed, that 'conversations on chemistry and natural philosophy' is an exceedingly popular common place book on those subjects, by a lady; a book, which by making its way, as a school book, has gone on to a great number of editions. Encouraged by the success of that work, she has proceeded to introduce the same mode of instruction in a popular book upon political economy. She declares that she hesitated about adopting the dialogue form. She ought not to have done it. We can hardly imagine, why this idle, wasteful, not to say ridiculous way of book making has ever found such universal acceptance with the public. The speakers all, save one, are universally the most namby pamby personages, that can be conceived. For aught they say of any import and smartness, there might just as well be a blank space left in the book, and the reader be notified, that in that blank it is supposed, that as interlocutor, a young and fair lady stands with her fingers in her mouth, or is stammering, looking sagacious, and endeavoring to give a cue to the chief speaker. This whole system of dialogue form is the most wretched expedient to eke out a book, that was ever invented. It is in fact no more than a mechanical expedient to break the monotony, and lighten the heaviness of a subject, which ought to find its vivacity and smartness in the pleasant manner, in which important matters are treated. This way is more particularly obnoxious in the book before us, because the authoress has abundantly proved that she knows so to fill up all the chasms and intervals of a book with interesting and important matter, that she needed not to fear the flagging attention of the reader. She has left no doubt, that the intervals, in which the fair speakers talk namby pamby, might have been completely filled with thoughts equally instructive with those, which enter into the grand work of the chief speaker.

The authoress seems well aware of the prevalent popular prejudice against the subject in hand. Most of the general mass of readers deem, that political economy imports either a very tedious, or a very mysterious subject, that it turns on monopolies, drawbacks, excises, rent, taxes, bounties, and matters as dull, as the wording of a law brief, and about which

no body cares, but Jews and drudging politicians and money lenders. Others hear the jargons of exchanges, balance of trade, tariff, production, operatives, and the like, and imagine, that it is a subject as profound as a well. The author happily illustrates, that it is a common, useful, and exceedingly interesting subject, about which every well informed person must have a great many exact ideas, or show themselves unable to take a proper part in the discussion of the most common and every day topics of conversation. Intelligent persons, like the excellent Mr. Jourdain, who was made to understand that he had been all his life talking prose without knowing it, have unconsciously conversed, and acted much upon this subject; and all, that is requisite for their becoming political economists in good earnest, is, that, like persons who speak and write good English without having formally learned grammar, they should analize their observations, and recollections upon the subject, reduce them to abstract principles and general rules, and they have a system of political economy ready built to their hands.

Some families prosper, grow easy in their circumstances, and every thing goes right with them, apparently with as little labor on their part, as the stream requires for the downward movement of its gliding waters. Others beside them, wiser in their own estimation and that of others, labor and sweat much, and are continually throwing away management and wisdom to no purpose; for their efforts seem to have no happier effect than the plunging of a team, fast in the slough, every struggle of which only involves it deeper in the mire. Most people attribute the different results to fortune, destiny, or in the familiar phrase, good or bad luck. In almost every case destiny or fortune have nothing to do with it. The wise house wife knows that there is no luck in good bread, beer and soup. If the proper elements are rightly prepared, and all the requisite circumstances noted, there is no luck in the case. The issue is sure. Bad luck is bad management. The proper knowledge, how to ensure the right direction and the fortunate issue of family management is called domestic economy. Political economy is none other than the same easy, quiet, simple prudence and knowledge of right management applied to the more numerous and extended household of a nation. The principles, that conduce to the right management of a family, abstracted, generalized, enlarged, and adapted to the more extended relations of a nation, constitute political economy. The reader will not need to be informed, that such is the derivative import of the term itself, from two Greek words, implying a law or rule of a house or family.

We cannot help observing, as we pass, that nothing has been more common in governments, than to see the great men acting in diametrical opposition to this view of the subject, selecting the prime managers and agents of the public concerns on a principle directly the reverse of this. From the commencement of governments, we have seen great numbers of men trop savants, too knowing, full of wise saws, shifts and movements, and imbued with new and brilliant invention, who soon ran their own domestic ship aground, so as to make a complete wreck, and as soon as they are safe on the bank, having no longer any thing to do, or care for of their own, they begin instantly to feel the most impatient yearnings to steer the public ship. Strange to tell, their having run their own proper office into

a sinecure, their having shown utter incompetence to manage small things, furnishes a reason and apparently in their view a claim for assigning them a new function of infinitely greater difficulty and combination, and entrusting to their management the ship of state. For us, in our political arithmetic, we construct this general political proposition. A man, who has been proved incompetent to manage a ship, has not therefore, originated any just claims to be appointed to a seventy-four. A man, who has proved himself a bankrupt, and incompetent in managing the concerns of a family, cannot thence urge any new reasons, why he should be selected for managing the financial concerns of a nation. We think we could so demonstrate these propositions, as unhesitatingly at the close to write Q. E. D.

Instead of making any critical remarks upon the book before us, other than that we deem it an exceedingly useful one of its kind, we shall proceed to a more laborious, and what we deem a more useful task, the attempt to give in the order of the book some of the most important maxims, doctrines, or propositions of political economy, as we find them expressed at large in this book, and those from which it is abridged. If they seem trite and common place to some, to others, we hope they will not be without their use. Splendid and populous cities, with magnificent mansions and great show of sumptuousness and expense, are not such proofs of the prosperity of a country, as the general populousness of the agricultural districts, the extent and diligence of cultivation, and the abundance of provisions.

The riches of a country consist in strong men to labor, good lands, well tilled, simple manuers and good morals.

The political disadvantages of a savage state are, that only a small number of men, spread over an immense surface, can find subsistence in it. It will require more land, to breed game enough for the support of one savage family, than would be necessary to support a thousand by tillage. The old, the feeble, and a great portion of the children, perish from exposure or hunger.

The pastoral state must have generated the necessity of individual property, and have given rise to social order. The history of civilization is that, also, of the origin of civil society.

Political economy consists of two parts, theory and practice, the science and the art. The science consists of a knowledge of the facts, that belong to it. The art consists in legislating wisely with a view to national wealth, comfort and defence. So strong are the natural causes, that tend to develope the wealth and prosperity of nations, that in civil governments with exceedingly ignorant or faulty administrations, there has been a general advancement in wealth and comfort. Nations have grown rich, not only without the aid of legislation, but in most cases against it.

All history teaches, that a poor, but virtuous people are both stronger and happier, than a rich and vicious one.

Political economy teaches the morality of nations, and is particularly inimical to the jealous, envious and malignant passions. If ever peace and moderation shall universally prevail, enlightened views of this science must teach the necessity. There is no value in the productions of a country, which can neither be consumed nor sold. The innumerable cattle of the pampas of South America tend little to the national wealth of

the countries, as vast districts of the country, where they most abound, are uninhabited. The grass in a few acres of enclosed meadows near our chief cities, is of more intrinsic value, than that of fifty million acres of uninhabited prairies of the western country. In England during the continental system of the late French emperor, coffee was said to have been thrown into the sea, because it would not pay the charges on being landed. The most essential requisite in the production of wealth is labor. Wise legislation stimulates it, disposes it to order, points the direction, in which it should operate, and above all, gives security to its products.

The savage has been preferred to the social state, on account of its supposed liberty, independence, and limited wants. All this is ideal. If the absence of want, and the reckless indolence of a savage constitute a degree of happiness, it would follow, that perfect insensibility would constitute a still greater. A certain test of the happiness of a community is the rapid increase of population. This is the scale of nature's indication.

The right of individual property is the first germ of society. Until it has been established by law, no man has a right to call any thing his own. The great advantage of well executed laws is security in person and property. Hence the welfare of the community is more directly concerned in the judicial, than any other branch of the government. The most im

portant institutions of property are those, that respect the tenure of land. Land and labor are the two essential elements of wealth. The condition of the humblest peasantry of a civilized country is infinitely superior to the often vaunted savage state, with all its freedom and independence.

Every man, when he enters into a state of civilized society, gives up a part of his natural liberty, as the price of purchasing security for the rest. That form of government is the best, which leaves the citizen entire master of his own conduct, except in those points, where it must be restrained for the public good.

God could have given us corn without labor. He has seen fit, however, to give us the wants and the faculties to raise it, and He has no where provided wild corn, or other important nutritives in any considerable quantities. Such a series of labors are necessary for the adequate production of these stamina of life, that cultivation can only succeed under the institution of laws, and the security of property. Countries, which, formerly under secure governments were the gardens of the world, are now deserts of desolation. Great portions of Asia and Africa afford examples.

Fenelon, in his picture of Boetia in Telemachus, has drawn a more delightful picture of a virtuous, simple and happy community, than any of Mr. Owen's views of a social system. Both are alike visions of the imagination.

The Swiss are universally considered a happy people. The men carry up steep ascents, inaccessible to beasts of burden, baskets of earth, to create a soil on a little nook of mountain rock. A Swiss woman poises the water or faggots, which she carries on her head, and busily knits as she walks. A Chinese woman was seen guiding a boat with one hand to the rudder and the other handling the sail, with her two feet she rowed. She had a child slung at her back, and a pipe in her mouth. How rapidly would wealth accumulate in the United States, if we were at once se lavish, and so economical of our labor!

In society one man will have a greater facility, endowment, inclination and opportunity to one sort of production, and another to another. Hence the origin of barter. One fabricates arrows, another hunts. They exchange the product of their labors, and this is barter. This naturally tends to the highest improvement of society, the division of labor. The extent of this latter is a scale, by which the advance of society in improvement may be graduated. It will require a painful attention to run over in our minds the number and variety of operatives that must have been employed in fabricating the necessaries of the poorest farmer. Consider his clothes, his hat, his shoes, his house, his iron, brass and copper utensils, his cattle, his harnessing, his teams, the variety of smithery requisite to his pursuits; and if you number up all the people that must have been concerned in producing these things, you will find, that it would require inhabitants sufficient to constitute a considerable village to have done it. We have tea from one extremity of the globe, and coffee from the other; and all the seas and the winds of heaven must have been put in requisition to furnish the luxuries of a rich man.

As a proof of the utility of the division of labor, take the following. A new hand at a forge can hardly make three hundred nails in a day. A common blacksmith can forge a thousand. Boys, exclusively trained to be nailers, have been seen to forge two thousand three hundred in a day. We have in our country a nailing machine, which one man tends, and which produces fifteen thousand in an hour! The operation of pin-making is a stronger proof. A workman without machinery, and not educated to the business, could scarcely make a pin in a day. At present one man is solely occupied in drawing the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; two operations are required for the head; another whitens the pins; and still another puts them in the paper. Ten persons in a pin factory, the smallest number, that could operate in this way, made fortyeight thousand pins in a day, that is to say each individual four thousand eight hundred.

Agriculturists are more healthy, moral and happy than manufacturers; though the latter are more attractive in their appearance, are better informed, and have an air of greater smartness, than the former. The author of the book before us supposes, that the reason, why crimes seem to be more common in manufacturing establishments is, that in a populous concern of this sort, all crimes are matter of general notoriety, whereas in the sparse and detached habitations of farmers, they become not matters of general note and observation.

When property is secure, some will be more industrious, and make wiser and more fortunate calculations than others; and hence some will be rich, and others poor. There is a natural, implied contract between the one and the other. The rich have more than they want, and the poor have labor to offer in exchange. Hence arises between them a barter of subsistence for labor. The value produced by the laborer exceeds that, of what he has consumed. The excess constitutes an income for the employer. That income can be obtained by the rich, only by employing the labor of the poor. Hence the reciprocity of benefit between them, rendering them mutually dependent and independent. Without the rich the