"floods of Roman blood." Now, they were effaced without the effusion of a drop of blood, eleven years after being promulgated, or in the first consulship of Pompey, in the year 683, Still more should he have avoided the following egregious anachronisms. Sylla: "While I left that Roman (Martus) to enjoy his

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power over the populace, I multiplied his mortifi❝cations, and forced him to go every day to the capi"tol to return thanks to the Gods for successes which "drove him to distraction." "At last Mithridates ❝sued for peace;-Mithridates was struck motionless,

and Marius trembled in the midst of Rome." Marius was banished in 665, returned in 666, and died January 13, 667. Sylla passed into Greece in 666, but did not take Athens till 1st March, 667. He made peace with Mithridates in 668. Again. "Chance, or perhaps a

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more powerful destiny, made me spare him, (C. Julius Cæsar.) My eyes are ever on him, I study his "soul where he hides deep purposes. But if he dare to "form the design of commanding men whom I have "made my equals, I swear by the Gods, I will punish "his insolence." The dialogue is supposed to take place a few days after the abdication of Sylla, or in the end of the year 674. Next year Sylla died. In 671, Cæsar, then in the 17th year of his age, and having been in great danger of being proscribed, passed into Asia, to serve under Minucius Thermus, and did not return to Rome till after the death of Sylla, in 675.

ART. IV. Observations on a Defence of the Funding System, contained in the Edinburgh Review, No. IX. Art. VIII.

IF the funding system be defensible upon principles of political economy, it might be expected that the writer of the above article could not fail in the execution of the task he had undertaken: if, on the other hand, it be indefensible, no familiarity with the principles of the science, no command of its technical language, no dexterity of argumentation, can ultimately protect it against a resolute and sedulous application of truths drawn from the same store-houses that he himself has resorted to; and which all who would qualify themselves, and be worthy, to enter into such discussions, must visit before they venture to step into the arena. The main proposition which the Reviewer had to establish was, that the funding system afforded the most advantageous mode of providing for the extraordinary expences of war: but he has appended that proposition to another, vis, that the extraordinary expenditure occasioned by war is in itself a good, a check to the excessive accumulation of wealth equally salutary with the checks that reduce a redundant population. He accordingly draws a parallel between wealth and population in the ratios and consequences of their increase; and asserts that "what the increase of wealth "has produced in Holland, the increase of population "has produced in China." "But the evils of increas "ing capital, like the evils of increasing population, 66 are felt long before the case has become extreme;' “and a nation it may be observed, is much more likely,

"(at least in the present state of commercial policy,) "to suffer from increasing wealth than from increas❝ing numbers of people.". He then enumerates the checks which there was reason, a priori, to suppose would be provided by nature; luxurious living, private profusion of every kind, but, above all, the expences

of war.

The corollary that one would naturally expect from the original doctrine above stated would be, that the best mode of providing for a war expenditure is that which opens the widest channel for carrying off redundant capital, and saves us most effectually from the misery of wallowing in excessive opulence. But no; he escapes per salium from that perilous ground, and assumes as the basis of his defence of the funding system, that it is the only mode in which a nation can raise extraordinary supplies without touching the capitals of individuals; and "that it directly throws the ex66 pences of the emergency upon the surplus revenue "of the community; first, by the yearly interest paid "for the use of the money borrowed, and then by the 66 provisions for gradual repayment, which a wise na

tion will always make a part of its funding system.' The system, it is contended, has this further advantage, that as war absorbs the men thrown out of employment by the obstructions which it opposes to trade and manufactures, so it also absorbs the capitals which the same obstructions deprive of their accustomed means of profitable investment. "Hence the public funds af"ford a sort of entrepôt for capital, a deposit, where "it is naturally collected in an useful employment," “ (inasmuch as wars are necessary evils,) ready at the "same time for other services, and capable of being

« transferred in a moment to fill those blanks which

accident may occasion.".

Now, I shall endeavour to prove, in the first place, that no analogy subsists between the effects of increas ing wealth and increasing population: secondly, that the funding system is the most wasteful and pernicious that could be adopted: thirdly, that the public funds afford no such deposit or receptacle for capital, whence it can be withdrawn at will, as the Reviewer imagines.

1. To speak of excessive wealth is as absurd as to speak of excessive virtue, or excessive happiness. Can we recede too far from poverty and vice; or possess too many sources of enjoyment? If great wealth be a curse, poverty must be a blessing; and if the Dutch suffer from super-abundant riches, the poor Chinese, and poorer Patagonian, must lead very comfortable lives. The paradox may be traced to an abuse of the words wealth and riches, and seems to be akin to that of Lord Lauderdale, who defined individual riches to "consist of all that man desires as useful or delightful "to him; which exists in a degree of scarcity:" whence it followed that the poorest of all conditions was that in which there was no scarcity, but a superfluity of all that man desires as useful or delightful! The Reviewer has entangled himself in all this inconsistency by ascribing to the increase of wealth what was solely the effect of the increase of population; and by deducing as parallel or analogous effects from two separate causes, what flowed from one and the same cause. Thus, if Holland has reached the utmost limit of advancement, and has become stationary, it is because her brimful population has occupied every source of revenue; because neither industry, skill, nor economy

could extract more from her narrow territory, and from commerce with surrounding nations. Holland is sta tionary from the same cause that China is stationary: for though Holland be rich and China poor, it does not follow that they are not both examples of plenitude of population. There has been something in the laws and political institutions of Europe, (which philosophers have investigated with more or less felicity, but in which much must be referred to an idio-syncracy inscrutable to human apprehensions, and) which has promoted such a subdivision of society, and such a diffusion of property through its several ranks, as are most favourable to civilization and happiness. The same circumstances, combined with the empire of opinion, preserve its ranks in their respective places, and prevent them from subsiding into the uniform poverty of China, by multiplying to the utmost extent that a supply of mere animal wants will permit. When Britain shall have arrived at the boundary of her progress, (from which she is far distant,) she will not begin to sink into poverty by dividing diminishing portions among increasing numbers: the rich will continue to maintain the same political preponderance, the same refinement in their manners, the same graceful magnificence in their establishments; the Corinthian capital will still crown the shaft; the pyramid will still be graduated from the base to the apex; while science and the arts will never fail to receive a munificent recom- 7 pence. As these attributes of European civilization would not be endangered by the progress of population, so neither has the want of them in China, nor her squalid poverty, been occasioned by the complete occupation of her immense territory by innumerable rice