money; and they had regular licences for that purpose. But nothing more was necessary to rouse the fears and ire of the country. The unconscious fathers of our Indian empire were assailed as the shameless enemies of their country; whose wealth, whose strength, whose treasure, they were habitually making less. Thomas Mun was apparently one of the associated merchants engaged in the East India trade; and he was roused to vindicate their innocence. Engaged in this task, the thought appears to have struck him, which it seems quite wonderful had not struck all the world long before, that to confine the attention to only the first processes of a lengthened and circuitous course of trade, was taking a very narrow and one-sided view of the matter-that a fuller investigation, by tracing the mercantile venture to its last results, might show that, although it began by exporting some bullion, it might end by importing much more; and thus add to the treasure and vitality of the country, instead of exhausting them: And he set himself about proving that this was eminently the case with the East India trade. He traces,

of course, the transactions of the exporters to India, through Asia and Europe, till the English merchants have got their money home, with large additions; and this done, he was for the time triumphant.

.

But he was as yet far from being weaned from the timehonoured prejudices of his countrymen in favour of the disused economical contrivances of their forefathers. After answering satisfactorily the objections to the India trade, and showing, he says, that it hath not hurt this commonwealth,' he proceeds to enumerate the true causes of those evils which we seek to 'chase away-and then enumerates four principal causes which carry away our gold and silver.' The first cause concerneth the standard; the second concerneth the exchanges of moneys with foreign countries, and the practice of those strangers here, ' in this realm, who make a trade by exchange of 'third cause concerneth neglect of duties;' and here, as if to moneys. The crown his adhesion to the flag of the old system, he exclaims, with patriotic indignation- But what shall we think of those men, who are placed in authority and office for his Majesty, if they should not, with dutiful care, discharge their trust con'cerning that excellent statute (anno 17, Edward IV.), that all the moneys received by strangers for their merchandise shall be employed upon the commodities of this realm? the due performance of which would not only prevent the carrying away of much gold and silver, but also be a means of greater

6

'vent of our own wares.'

We have mentioned this statute of Edward IV. before, as

modifying one of Henry VI.; but Mun was mistaken in supposing it to be the operative statute of employment' when he wrote. Henry VII. had passed another, and extended its provisions to traders from Jersey, Guernsey, and Ireland.* But these statutes of employment, in all their shapes, formed the most tyrannical and mischievous portion of that systematical interference with the bargains and dealings of individuals, which we have before been describing; and Mun's eyes were assuredly very imperfectly unscaled, when he was unconscious of their deformity, and joined in an ignorant clamour for their resuscitation.

A great and decisive enlargement of his views, however, hady taken place, before we meet with him again. He had waxed old and wise. He was (says his son) in his time famous among 'merchants; and well known to most men of business, for his 'general experience in affairs, and notable insight into trade; 'neither was he less observed for his integrity to his prince, and ' zeal to the commonwealth.' And the commencement of his important posthumous work is worthy of the character thus given by filial piety-grave, self-possessed, elevated, holy-the language of one not unconscious of the fact, that he was about to settle questions which had agitated nations; and to throw his own appointed portion of new light on the paths through which they must advance towards happiness and strength.

My son (he begins), in a former discourse I have endeavoured, ' after my manner, briefly to teach thee two things: the first is 'piety, how to fear God aright, according to His works and 'word; the second is policy, how to love and serve thy country, by instructing thee in the duties and proceedings of sundry vocations, which either order, or else act, the affairs of the com'monwealth; in which, as some things do especially tend to preserve, and others are more apt to enlarge, the same: So I am now to speak of money, which doth indifferently serve to both 'those happy ends.'

The spirit of the book will best be understood by comparing it with Mun's earlier pamphlet. He dwells here, as there, on the necessity of looking at the last results of mercantile adventures, in order to appreciate their action in increasing or diminishing the bullion, the treasure of the country: But he now discards, as idle devices, all those parts of the balance-of-bargain

* 3d Henry VII. c. 8.

machinery to which he had before adhered. He discusses separately the statutes of employment he had before especially commended the enjoining (as was once the nation's wont) to the merchant that exporteth fish, corn, or munition, to return 'all or part of the value in money;' he derides all fears of the effects of the undervaluation of our money in exchange, and of the other necromantic tricks of the exchangers; and at last concludes But let the merchant's exchange be at a high 'rate, or a low rate, or at the par pro pari, or put down alto'gether. Let foreign princes enhance their coins, or debase 'their standards; and let his Majesty do the like, or keep them 'constant as they now stand. Let foreign coins pass current

here in all payments, at higher rate than they are worth at the mint; let the statute for employment by strangers stand in 'force, or be repealed; let the mere exchanger do his worst ; 'let princes oppress, lawyers extort, usurers bite, prodigals waste; and, lastly, let merchants carry out what money they 'shall have occasion to use in traffic-Yet all these actions can 'work no other effect on the course of trade than is declared in 'this discourse; For so much treasure only will be brought in 'or carried out of a commonwealth, as the foreign trade doth 'over or under balance in value; and this must come to pass, by 'a necessity beyond all resistance. So that all other courses 'which tend not to this end, howsoever they may seem to force money into a kingdom for a time, yet are they, in the end, not 'only fruitless, but also hurtful: They are like to violent floods 'which bear down their banks, and suddenly remain dry again 'for want of water.'

over.

The long agonies of the balance-of-bargain system were now We have heard its knell. Mun's book was received as the gospel of finance and commercial policy; and his principles ruled for above a century the policy of England, and much longer that of the rest of Europe.

The task we had appointed ourselves is now over. We have traced, from its construction to its disappearance, the rude but strong commercial and legislative machinery by which our forefathers sought to enrich the realm, and preserve its increasing riches. Let us cast, however, one rapid glance in advance. We have seen that Mun never doubted the truth of the proposition, that bullion alone constituted real riches. It took another hundred years to expel this fallacy, even from the more enlightened part of the public mind; and they were a hundred years of great activity both of English mind and English policy. Through the whole course of it, a large body of mercantile literature urged on the

government the interests of trade, and the all-importance of its balance; till the real interests of both producing and consuming classes were almost put out of sight. And statesmen obeyed the impulse. They believed, as Colbert believed, that to gain bullion was to gain the only true riches by which their country could thrive; and they too talked and wrote, and fought and treated, and circumvented, and thought they overreached sometimes a rival, sometimes an ally, sometimes a poor colony, in the pursuit of the one great patriotic duty of enriching the realm through the balance of trade. In the mean time, the truth, that all commodities were a part of the wealth of a nation, seems for ever forcing itself on the notice of the busy writers who occupied the stage; and seems to have escaped them, by a miracle somewhat similar to that by which the spell-bound knights of Arthur's court were rendered unconscious of the actual presence of the holy Sangreal. A volume of instances might be adduced to show this; the most remarkable, however, and it must suffice, is that of Davenant. In one of his numerous works he sets about proving that the Custom-house books were not always conclusive evidence of the real balance of trade; and he says, that however unfavourable the indications in those books may be, yet, if the breed of animals is improving, if buildings, mills, ships, rents, &c., are increasing, we may rely on that increase as a proof-of what? Of an increase of the wealth of the country? Not at all; but as a proof that the balance of trade must, after all, be more favourable than the mere Custom-house accounts show it to be. Davenant, of course, remained firm in the faith that bullion alone constituted wealth. Without adverting to the glimmering revelations of partial truth which sometimes vary the utter darkness of the times on this point, we may observe, that before Adam Smith's work appeared, Galiani, Quesnay, Harris, and Hume, had all unveiled the fallacy which had so long received the blind homage of mankind-Quesnay, Harris, and Hume, with precision-Galiani, the first in time and genius, with a beautiful purity and simplicity of style; and a profound and acute philosophical discrimination, which place him in the first rank of philosophers of any age or nation. But Smith was the first to see the whole value of the great truth they had disclosed, and to follow it out to its consequences with equal confidence and care. And it accordingly became at once in his hands, what it had been very lamely and imperfectly in theirs, the foundation of a new structure of economical science. Having shown that bullion was not exclusively wealth, he not merely proceeded to show that commodities were national wealth, but to analyse and

explain the circumstances which determine their plentiful or stinted production; and from his work we may date the beginning of that era in economical knowledge which is still in progress-and probably in an earlier stage of its progress than the self-complacency of our own generation is very willing to admit.

We are aware that in thus speaking of the precursors of Smith we run the danger of arousing some jealousy and some anger; but as nothing can be more base than the malignant eagerness with which such facts are sometimes used to disparage greatness, so nothing can be more idle than the fears of those who imagine that they really detract from the solid fame of a writer like Smith.

None but those ignorant of the ordinary march of knowledge will think it derogatory to the great Economist that he did not create all the light he used; that he seized the trembling and imperfect beams which, in the general progress of thought, many other intellects had begun to emit, and knit them with a strong hand into a perfect ray; which sheds a light upon the path of nations that can only disappear with the disappearance of the accumulated knowledge of our race. Such is the appointed task of all great leaders, in both moral and physical science; and such are the achievements which leave the human race their everlasting debtors.

ART. VIII-1. Mr REDGRAVE's Letter on the School of Design, to Lord JOHN RUSSELL. The Builder-Dec. 1846.

2. The Papers and Transactions of the Decorative Art Society' from January 1844 to January 1846. London.

3. Fresco Decorations and Stuccoes of Churches and Palaces in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries; taken from the principal Works of the greatest Painters. Drawn and Engraved by THURMER, GUTENSOHN, PISTRUCCI, GRUNER, and others. With English Descriptions. By LUDOVIg Gruner. 46 Plates, folio. London: 1844.

I' T may seem idle to say one word, to prove the importance of the Arts of Design as applied to manufactures, and that, as regards all those articles (the excellence of which depends on the beauty of the pattern), it is essential that the designer should be skilled in the fine arts. And yet England, confessedly