creet silence, lest in the very next number of this very magazine, we should find two or three pages filled with avenging remarks.

We shall not at present enter into a formal refutation of all the calumnies which man, in the lordliness and vanity of his heart, has poured forth against his fairer half; (but we do heartily wish that all such offenders may be brought to speedy and condign punishment, for which purpose we recommend a jury of matrons to be impannelled.) There is, however, one accusation which is really too unjust to be passed over in silence, . and we shall therefore say a word or two on the subject of female constancy.

Fickleness has been an imputed female fault from the time of Horace, and long before, and the sentiment has been re-echoed by every misogynistic satirist. "Thou art not false, but thou art fickle," is the lightest of their accusations. The charge, however, comes but badly from the mouth of a man. What is the advice which a great philosopher, who looked "quite through the deeds of men," has given to his son, "Remember when thou wert a sucking child, that thou then didst love thy nurse, and that thou wert fond of her; after a while thou didst love thy dry-nurse, and didst forget the other; after that, thou didst also despise her: so will it be with thee, in thy liking in elder years; and therefore, though thou canst not forbear to love, yet forbear to link, and after a while thou shalt find an alteration in thyself, and see another far more pleasing than the first, second, or third love." This is old crafty Sir Walter Raleigh! How much truth and how much guile is there in this sentence! "And this is man's fidelity!"

It is strange that man should be so jealous of his superiority, as to endeavour to degrade the character of woman in order to exalt his own. It is only one mode of playing the tyrant-a part capable of being enacted in so many different shapes. The civilized man complains they are talkative, jealous, narrow minded, and hence assumes a mastery-the Indian's reasoning is shorter -he makes them carry his burdens.

There is one mortal offence in women for which they have been, more than once, rated roundly by the satirists. “All women," says one of our malevolent old dramatists, "have six senses; that is, seeing, hearing, tattling, smelling, touching, and the last and feminine sense, the sense of speaking." We feel rather inclined to suspect, that the lords and masters of this goodly creation would not be very well content to allow the last of these senses to be the exclusive privilege of their fair partners. So far indeed from such a concession, they have absolutely monopolized the power of speaking (par excellence) to the exclusion of those who they contend are so much their superiors in the exercise of it. Who ever heard of a lady making a speech? We certainly do not mean to contend from this that our ladies

are speechless: but we do say it is unfair in a man to attend a public meeting, and tire his auditors to death with a speech of two hours' length, filled with all the common-places of all the common writers of the day, and then to return home and chide his daughter for pouring forth a gay ten minutes' rattle in the overflowing gaiety of her youthful heart. While a man is talking stupid sense, you hear a woman uttering lively nonsense; and the latter commodity is infinitely more estimable in our opinion. On this subject, we may quote four of the best lines Dr. Darwin

ever wrote:

Hear the pretty ladies talk,
Tittle-tattle, tittle-tattle,

Like their pattens, when they walk,
Piddle-paddle, piddle-paddle.

There are very few men that know how to converse. You see many a man like Addison, who can draw on his banker for £1000, but who has not nine-pence in ready cash, to contribute as his share in conversation. Women, on the contrary, are. always both ready and willing to speak. Women have a most graceful way of talking about nothing, which men, in their wisdom, esteem beneath their powers. The French ladies are pre-eminent in this art; and after them the Irish ladies hold the most distinguished place. It is absolutely marvellous to listen to two sisters, who have been parted for three weeks, edifying each other with their mutual stores of intelligence, of which their brothers would have disburdened themselves in one-tenth of the time.

The way in which women employ their time has always appeared to us most unaccountable. We ourselves have in general a good deal to do-poring over crabbed books all the morning-writing sonnets to our mistress's eyebrow-cunningly making notes for a sly article in the New Monthlyplaying chess and tennis-and hugging ourselves over the last new novel-yet, in spite of all these very multifarious occupations, we must confess it, there is many an hour that lies heavy on our hands, and neither by walking or reading, writing or riding, can we contrive to fill up all the little interstices of our life, so as completely to exclude that most villanous fiend ennui. But a lady-(we entreat our male readers for a moment to raise their eyes from our pages, and consult their wife, or their sister, or their first cousin, or any other lady who may perchance be sitting next them)-a lady who sits in the house all day-who, out of the whole blessed four-and-twenty hours, is the absolute mistress of sixteen of them, and who has no imperative duties to perform that can possibly exact her attention for one-eighth of that period-that lady will tell you, that the

day is so very short, that she actually has not half time enough to do all she intends, and that she cannot recollect an hour which has not passed with too great rapidity. We have put this question to a great variety of our fair friends, and we have invariably received the same answer from all of them.

In estimating the virtues of our fair countrywomen, we should perhaps feel inclined to award the palm of excellence to those who move in the higher ranks of our middle classes, possessing as they do all the polish which the first society can confer, with that utility of character, which the daughters of our nobility can seldom have the opportunity of acquiring. We do not intend to enter into a dissertation on the accomplishments and cultivation of the female mind at the present day-which may probably save our reader's patience, and our own fingers-else could we show how this lady excels in mathematics, and how that one is deeply versed in political economy-in short, how much our country owes to the efforts of its numerous authoresses. Probably, however, in some future number, we may attempt to appreciate the merits of the "Living Poetesses of England.”

TO M. SAY.

ON SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES IN STATISTICS, AND THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT STAGNATION OF COMMERCE.

LETTER I.

SIR, It was with the pleasure which I usually enjoy from the discussions of scientific men on questions of real utility, that I read your letters to Mr. Malthus, on Political Economy. The subjects are not only of theoretical, but great practical importance; particularly at present, when the people of Europe, as well as of North America, are suffering from a general stagnation, amid peace and plenty.

You address your observations to Mr. Malthus; and it will be for that economist to make what reply he judges convenient. But the questions are for general consideration; and, as you know well that I also have laid before the public opinions on these. very subjects, and that they do not coincide with your's, you will not be surprised that I should be a volunteer in the cause, in order to give my reasons for coming to a different conclusion.

That what we call money, whether in the shape of gold, silver, copper, paper, or any other material, is merely an artificial ready medium for exchanging what we have gotten to dispose of with what we want to obtain, whatever be the character of either, or,

in plain popular language, of selling and buying, will be disputed by no one. And that the amount of the value of what the various circulators can purchase, must be equal to the amount of the value of what they can sell, is so evident, that it may be said to be a truism; for actual selling and buying necessarily suppose each other to be equal in amount.

I fully grant, therefore your postulatum: "As the value we can buy is equal to the value we can produce."-But I cannot admit the conclusion you draw from this, "The more men can produce, the more they will purchase." The real principles of Nature and their actual results, far from supporting this, frequently confirm the contrary. The quantum of the produce of the seller often operates to diminish his capacity as a buyer; and, in a certain combination of the demand and supply, effects this uniformly.

Your opinion is indeed similar to that of Dr. Adam Smith with respect to certain kinds of produce, and derived by him from that quality of commodities which he reckoned the sources of productiveness. This fundamental doctrine of his, I conceive I have shown, is an absurd dogma.* The species of commodities which, together with the labour that gives them existence, he calls productive, being thus, by nature, creative of wealth, the greater the quantity of them that can be produced, the greater, according to him, must be the creation of wealth. But what say Nature and her results? To produce these articles beyond a certain quantum, instead of adding to wealth, will engender poverty. Nature and her results, at this very moment of stagnation, are teaching this doctrine too impressively and clearly, to be misunderstood by those who will attend to her operations.

The source of your incorrect conclusion is a similar misconception. It could only be correct on the supposition that an increased quantum of produce uniformly supposed an increased quantum of value, whereas it frequently implies the reverse.

By produce you evidently mean, like others, supply. And as the latter term conveys more clearly and distinctly what is meant, it had better be used, though I do not carp at or reject the term produce as any way improper.

I shall now proceed to show that, according to the arrangement of Nature, an increase in the quantum of produce, or the supply, by no means necessarily supposes an increase in the quantum of value of the articles produced; and that in the conclusion which you have come to, you have left out something of essential importance, which renders that conclusion fallacious and positively incorrect.

In nature, or real life, the value of the produce is uniformly

⚫ Letter to Sir John Sinclair, prefixed to "The Happiness of States," p. xx. &c.

connected with the demand for the produce; that is, the demand and the supply are uniformly combined in giving the value or price. And it is on the relative state of the two things to each other that the actual value more or less depends.

In your letter to me of the 2d September, 1817, you express yourself as if you thought that I considered the demand to be the sole creator of exchangeable value. To teach this, would be to commit an error similar to that of the maintainers of the unproductive theory. It would be only substituting the demand for the supply, or the other half for the whole. This is by no means the doctrine which I have laid before the public. I consider the demand to be essentially necessary to the creation of exchangeable value; but I consider the supply to be equally necessary. And throughout "The Happiness of States," I have endeavoured to prove, that a profitable result depends on a due combination of the demand and the supply; and that, if the supply be in the due proportion to the demand, the result will be an increase of wealth to the circulator and the nation, whether the employment required, or its produce, be in the class of what is reckoned productive, or in that which is reckoned unproductive, by Dr. Adam Smith or his disciples.

I shall take the liberty here to quote what I stated to you formerly on the subject of the demand. "The demand, which is made up of the wants and wishes of circulators, creates circuland; but it is the quality of profitable chargeability, or, in other words, being the medium of a profitable price, that renders it effectually productive. The demand is often inefficient with respect to the production of wealth. Sometimes the article which is demanded cannot be supplied, and then chargeability cannot take place. At other times, and this happens frequently, the demand, from the state of the supply, fails to be productive, as the quantum of chargeability is deficient. And yet the demand may be very great, but the supply is greater. This deprives the circuland of the quality of chargeability in a profitable degree."*

In this discussion I beg leave to state, once for all, that by value I mean not value in point of use, but value in point of exchange, exchangeable value, or the quality which produces what we popularly call income.

Now it is so evident that the value of what is produced depends essentially on the demand for it, that the proposition needs only to be stated to obtain the assent of all acquainted with the subject. If any person produce what no other person wishes to obtain, it will be of no value whatever; for nobody will buy

*Third Letter to M. Say, Gray versus Malthus; or the Principles of Population and Production investigated. p. 414.