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duced a garter, with which he attempted to bind his Majesty's hands. James freed his left with a violent exertion, exclaiming, "I am a free Prince, man! I will not be bound!" Ruthven, without answering, seized him by the throat with one hand, while he thrust the other into his mouth, to prevent his crying. In the struggle which ensued, the King was driven against the window which overlooked the court, and, at that moment, Henderson thrust his arm over the Master's shoulder and pushed up the window, which afforded the King an opportunity of calling for assistance. The Master, thereupon, said to *** Henderson, "Is there no help in thee? Thou wilt cause us all to die :" and tremblingly, between excitement and exertion, he attempted to draw his sword. The King, perceiving his intent, laid hold of his hand; and thus clasped in a death-wrestle, they reeled out of the closet into the chamber. The King had got Ruthven's head under his arm; whilst Ruthven, finding himself held down almost upon his knees, was pressing upwards with his hand against the King's face, when, at this critical moment, John Ramsay, the page, who had heard from the street the King's cry for help, and who had got before Mar and Lennox, by running up the black turnpike formerly mentioned, while they took the principal staircase, rushed against the door of the chamber and burst it open. The King panted out, when he saw his page," Fy! strike him low! he has secret armour on." At which Ramsay, casting from him the hawk which still sat upon his hand, drew his dagger and stabbed the Master. The next moment, the King, exerting all his strength, threw him from him down stairs. Ramsay ran to a window, and called upon Sir Thomas Erskyne, and one or two who were with him, to come up the turnpike. Erskyne was first, and as Ruthven staggered past him on the stair, wounded and bleeding, he desired those who followed to strike the traitor. This was done, and the young man fell, crying, "Alas! I had not the wyte of it."

The King was safe for the meantime, but there was still cause for alarm. Only four of his attendants had reached him; and he was uncertain whether the incessant attempts of Mar and Lennox's party to break open the door by which the chamber communicated with the gallery, were made by friend or foe. At this moment the alarm bell rang out, and the din of the gathering citizens, who were as likely, for any thing the King knew, to side with their provost, Gowrie, as with himself, was heard from the town. There was, besides, a still more immediate danger.

Gowrie, whom we left attempting to force his way into the house, was met at the gate by the news that his brother had fallen. Violet Ruthven, and other women belonging to the family, were already wailing his death, screaming their curses up to the King's party in the chamber, and mixing their shrill execrations with the fierce din which shook the city. The Earl, seconded by Cranstone, one of his attendants, forced his way to the foot of the black turnpike, at which spot lay the Master's body. "Whom have we here?" said the retainer, for the face was turned downwards. "Up the stair!" was Gowrie's brief and stern reply. Cranstone, going up before his master, found, on rushing into the chamber, the swords of Sir Thomas Erskyne, and Herries, the King's physician, drawn against him. They were holding a parley in this threatening attitude when Gowrie entered, and was instantly attacked by Ramsay. The Earl fell after a smart contest. Ramsay immediately turned upon Cranstone, who had proved fully a match for the other two, and having wounded him severely, forced him finally to retreat.

All this time they who were with the Duke of Lennox had kept battering at the gallery-door of the chamber with hammers, but in vain. The partition was constructed of boards, and as the whole wall gave way equally before the blows, the door could not be forced. The party with the King, on the other hand, were afraid to open, lest they

should thus give admission to enemies. A servant was at last dispatched round by the turnpike, who assured his Majesty that it was the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Mar who were so clamorous for admission. The hammers were then handed through below the door, and the bolts speedily displaced. When these noblemen were admitted, they found the King unharmed, amid his brave deliverers. The door, however, which entered from the turnpike, had been closed upon a body of Gowrie's retainers, who were calling for their master, and striking through below the door with their pikes and halberds. The clamour from the town continued, and the voices from the court were divided,-part calling for the King, part for their provost, the Earl of Gowrie. Affairs, however, soon took a more decided turn. They who assaulted the door grew tired of their ineffectual efforts, and withdrew; and almost at the same moment the voices of Bailies Ray and Young were heard from the street, calling to know if the King were safe, and announcing that they were there, with the loyal burgesses of Perth, for his defence. The King gratified them by showing himself at the window, requesting them to still the tumult. At the command of the magistrates the crowd became silent, and gradually dispersed. In the course of a few hours, peace was so completely re-established, that the King and his company were able to take horse for Falkland.

This bird's-eye view of the occurrences of the fifth of August will be found correct in the main. Although some details have been necessarily omitted, they are sufficient to establish a preconcerted scheme between the brothers against the King, but of what nature, and to what purpose, it would be difficult, without further evidence, to say. Of all the people that day assembled in Gowrie's house, not one seems to have been in the secret. Henderson, to whom an important share in the execution of the attempt had been assigned, was kept in ignorance to the last moment, and then he counteracted, instead of furthering their views. Even with regard to Cranstone, the most busy propagator of the rumour of the King's departure, it is uncertain whether he may not have spread the report in consequence of the asseverations of his master; and we have his solemn declaration at a time when he thought himself upon his death-bed, that he had no previous knowledge of the plot. The two Ruthvens of Freeland, Eviot, and Hugh Moncreiff, who took the most active share in endeavouring to stir the citizens up to mutiny to revenge the Earl and his brother, may have been actuated, for any evidence we have to the contrary, solely by the feelings of reckless and devoted retainers, upon seeing their masters fall in an affray whose origin and cause they knew not. To this evidence, partly negative, and partly positive, may be added the deposition of William Rynd, who said, when examined at Falkland, that he had heard the Earl declare," He was not a wise man, who, having intended the execution of a high and dangerous purpose, should communicate the same to any but himself; because, keeping it to himself, it could not be discovered nor disappointed." Moreover, it does not sufficiently appear, from the deportment of the Master, that they aimed at the King's life. He spoke only of making him prisoner, and grasped his sword only when the King had made his attendants aware of his situation. At the same time, it was nowhere discovered that any measures had been taken for removing the royal prisoner to a place of security; and to keep him in a place so open to observation as Gowrie-house, was out of the question. Without some other evidence, therefore, than that to which we have as yet been turning our attention, we can scarcely look upon these transactions otherwise than as a fantastic dream, which is coherent in all its parts, and the absurdity of which is only apparent when we reflect how irreconcilable it is with the waking world around us.

The letters of Logan of Restalrig throw some further light upon the subject, though not so much as could be

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are inseparably connected, and have been rendered more interesting, by a late attempt to implicate the Presbyterian party in the Earl's guilt. We are not a little astonished that such an attempt should have been made at this late period, when we recollect, that notwithstanding all the ill odour in which the Presbyterian clergymen stood at court, not one of the thousand idle rumours to which Gowrie's enterprise gave birth tried to direct suspicion towards them. The sole grounds upon which such an accusation can rest for support, are the facts,— That Gowrie's father was a leader among the Presbyterians, and his son strictly educated in that faith; that shortly after his arrival in Italy, he wrote one letter to a Presbyterian minister; and that some of the Edinburgh clergymen manifested considerable obstinacy in throwing discredit upon the reality of the conspiracy. The two former are of themselves so weak, that we pass them over, the more willingly, that we shall immediately point out the motives from which Gowrie acted, and the sort of assistance upon which he really relied. The conduct of the clergymen admits of an easy explanation. James, whose perception was nearly as acute as his character was weak, was fully sensible of the ridicule to which he had

wished. Of their authenticity little doubt can be entertained, when we consider the number and respectability of the witnesses who swore positively to their being in Logan's handwriting. It appears from these letters that Gowrie and Logan had agreed in some plot against the King. It appears, also, that Logan was in correspondence with some third person who had assented to the enterprise. It would almost seem, from Logan's third letter, that this person resided at Falkland: "If I kan nocht win to Falkland the first nycht, I sall be tymelie in St Johnestoun on the morne." And it is almost certain from the fifth letter, that he was so situated as to have oral communication with Gowrie the Master of Ruth"Pray his lo. be qwik, and bid M. A. remember on the sport he tald me." It does not appear, however, that any definite plan had been resolved upon. The sea excursion, which Mr Lawson, in his History of the Gowrie Conspiracy, supposes to have been contemplated with the design of conveying James to Fast Castle, was only meant to afford facilities for a meeting of the conspirators with a view to deliberation. Logan's fifth letter is dated as late as the last day of July, and yet it does not appear that the writer knew at that time of the Perth project. Taking these facts in conjunction with the hair-exposed himself, by allowing his desire of money to lead brained character of Gowrie's attempt, it seems highly probable, that although some scheme might be in agitation with Logan, and perhaps some other conspirators, the outrage of the fifth of August was the rash and premature undertaking of two hot-blooded fantastical young men, who probably wished to distinguish themselves above the rest of their associates in the plot.

him into so shallow a device as Ruthven's. In addition to this, he wished, upon all occasions, to appear as much of the hero as possible. The consequence was, that his edition of the story was so dressed up, as to render it inconsistent, first, with his well-known character; secondly, with the most distant possibility of his having been deceived with the Master's pretences; and, thirdly, with the depositions of the witnesses. Inconsistencies so startling were sufficient to justify some preliminary scepticism; and if ever there was an occasion, where it was allowable openly to call a king's word in question, it was when James demanded, not merely that his party should hypocritically profess a belief which they did not entertain, but that they should, daringly and blasphemously, mix up this falsehood in the solemn services of devotion. A short time, however, was sufficient to convince the most incredulous of the truth of the conspiracy, stripped of the adventitious circumstances which the King linked with it; and the obstinate recusancy of Bruce the clergyman is sufficiently accounted for, by James's insisting upon prescribing the manner in which he was to treat the matter, and by that individual's overstrained notions of the guilt incurred by a minister, who allowed any one to dictate to him concerning the mode in which he was to conduct public worship.

The very scanty information that we possess respecting the character and previous habits of these two brothers, is quite in accordance with this view of the matter, and goes a good way to corroborate it. They are allowed, on all hands, to have been men of graceful exterior, of winning manners, well advanced in the studies of the times, brave, and masters of their weapons. It is not necessary surely to prove at this time of day, how compatible all these qualifications are with a rash and headlong temper, completely subject to the control of the imagination-a turn of mind bordering upon frenzy. A man of quick perception, warm feeling, and ungoverned fancy, is, of all others, the most fascinating, when the world goes smoothly; but he is of all others the most liable, having no guiding reason, to err most extravagantly in the serious business of life: being "unstable as water," he is easily irritated and lashed into madness by adverse circumstances. How much Gowrie was the dupe of his imagination, is evident from the fondness with which he clung to the de- But Gowrie relied upon the support of no faction, relusions of the cabala, natural magic, and astrology. Arm-ligious or political. His sole motive seems to have been ed (according to his own belief) with powers beyond the a fantastic idea of the duty incumbent upon him to recommon race of man, doomed by his stars to achieve venge his father's death. He is reported, on one occasion, greatness, he laughed at danger, and was ready to neglect when some one directed his attention to a person who the calculations of worldly prudence alike in his aims, had been employed as an agent against his father, to have and the means by which he sought their attainment. The said, "Aquila non captat muscas." Ruthven, also, extrue state of his brother's mind is pourtrayed, incidentally, pressly declared to the King, when he held him prisoner by Logan, in his first letter:-" Bot incase ye and M. A. in the closet, that his only object was to obtain revenge R. forgader, becawse he is somqhat consety, for Godis for the death of his father. The letters of Logan (exsaik be very var with his rakelese toyis of Padoa; ffor he cept in one solitary instance, where a scheme of aggrantald me ane of the strangest taillis of ane nobill man of disement is darkly hinted at, and that as something quite Padoa that ever I hard in my lyf, resembling the lyk irrelevant to the purpose they had on hand) harp on this purpose." This suggests at once the very picture of a string alone, proving that Gowrie and his friends seek young and hot-blooded man, whose brain had been dis-only" for the revange of that cawse." The only mem tracted, during his residence in Italy, with that country's bers of the conspiracy who are known to us, are men numerous legends of wild vengeance. Two such charac- likely enough to engage in such a cause, but most unters, brooding conjointly over real or fancied wrongs, likely to be either leaders or followers in a union, where were capable of projecting schemes, against which the the parties were bound together by an attachment to cermost daring would remonstrate; and, irritated by the tain political principles. The three conspirators are, the coldness of their friends, were, no doubt, induced to un- Earl and his brother, such as we have already described dertake the execution alone and almost unassisted. them, and Logan of Restalrig, a broken man-a retainer and partisan of Bothwell-a maintainer of thieves and sorners a man who expressly objects to communicating their project to one who he fears" vill disswade us fra owr purpose wt ressounes of religion, qhilk I can never

It only remains to enquire what was the object which Gowrie proposed to himself, in his mad and treasonable attempt, and upon whose seconding he was to depend, suppose his design had succeeded? These two enquiries

abyd." And if any more evidence were required, to show how little Gowrie relied upon the Presbyterians, we might allude to his anxiety, that Logan should sound his brother Lord Home-a Catholic.

The animal, as if aware of its danger, instantly took to flight, but not quickly enough to prevent the ant-lion from seizing the bag of eggs between its formidable pincers; the mother made every effort to withdraw herself from her dangerous foe, and in her struggles, the bag became loosened, and was retained by her enemy. Instead, however, of saving her own life, which she could easily have done by running off, she instantly turned and seized the bag between her jaws, and struggled to retain her lost treasure; the enormous strength of the ant-lion was too great for her power, even though stimulated by the full force of maternal instinct, and the eggs were consequently drawn under the sand; she retained her hold, and rather than relinquish that, without which life was a burden, she suffered herself to be buried alive with her progeny. It was now that Bonnel compassionated her fate, and rescued her from the jaws of death, but he could not restore to her the bag of eggs so tenacious

In short, every thing leads us to the opinion we have already announced, that the Ruthvens were instigated to their enterprise by feelings of private revenge alone, and that they did not seek to make any political party subservient to their purposes. It is to this isolated nature of their undertaking-its utter want of connexion with the political movements of the period that we attribute the circumstance of its history having so long remained unknown, and are satisfied that much of that history must ever remain a riddle. It is with it, as with the adventures of the Iron Mask, and that whole class of events which seem political, merely because they befall personsly held by the ant-lion. She lingered at the spot where the who rank high in the state. They generally appear more mysterious than they really are, because, if no chance unveils them at the time, they stand too far apart from all

other transactions, to receive any reflected light from them.

The Family Library. No. VII. The Natural History
of Insects.
Volume first, pp. 313. London. John
Murray, 1829.

THE publisher of the Family Library is (we speak it with reverence) like a man who has an immense store of information, and is in an immense hurry to utter it all, so does not wait to finish one subject before he begins another, but taking up half-a-dozen at once, weaves them all into one variegated chain of discourse. Like Cæsar, who could at one moment keep the fingers of four secretaries panting after him in vain,-or like a dear friend of our own, of happy memory, who could in one and the same breath, tell a sturdy capitalist the price of stocks, groan out to some yellow Nabob a remark on the liver complaint, and rehearse to an elderly lady a fragment of last Sunday's sermon, with a downward and austere drag of one extremity of his mouth, while the other was puckered up and sliding out an arch compliment to his blushing cousin, so Mr Murray pushes into your hand a history of Painters, and before you know what you are about, crams after it a history of the nation who were forbid to "make unto themselves the likeness of any thing in Heaven above or earth beneath," then tosses you a history of Napoleon Bonaparte, and while you are busy catching it, he all at once darts a history of Insects at your unguarded knowledge-box.

eggs were buried, regardless alike of her own danger and the efforts of Bonnel to remove her from her enemy, by pushing her off with a piece of twig."

The following duel between two bees reminds us strongly of the single combat between Burley and Bothwell; nor is the non-chalant attitude of the victor unlike Dandy Dinmont singing "Johnny Cope" over the prostrate body of Dirk Hatteraick:

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"On those fine spring days, in which the sun is beautiful and warm, duels may often be seen to take place between two inhabitants of the same hive. In some cases, the quarrel seems to have begun within, and the combatants may be seen coming out of the gates eager for blows.' Sometimes a bee, peaceably settled on the outside of the hive, or your thumb at me, sir?) and then the attack commences, walking about, is rudely jostled by another ( do you bite each endeavouring to obtain the most advantageous position. They turn, pirouette, throttle each other; and such is their bitter earnestness, that Reaumur has been enabled to come near enough to observe them with a lens without causing a separation. After rolling about in the dust, the victor watching the time when its enemy uncovers his body, by elongating it, in the attempt to sting, thrusts its weapon between the scales, and the next instant its antagonist stretches out its quivering wings and expires. A bee cannot be killed so suddenly, except by crushing, as by the sting of another bee. Sometimes the stronger insect produces the death of the vanquished by squeezing its chest. After this feat has been done, the victorious bee constantly remains, says Reaumur, near his victim, standing on his four front legs, and rubbing the two posterior ones together."

We feel strongly tempted to lay before our readers some account of the wars and Olympic games of the ants: but being in a sentimental mood at present, we prefer quoting the description of the preparations made by the females of that industrious race for entering upon Somebody or other published not long ago "The Rothe duties of matronhood. And by our hopes of a good mance of History." It is a pity he paid so little attenwife we swear it, these gentle creatures seem to tear off tion to the history of insects, for theirs is a page in the their wings, the badge of maidenhood, with less reluctgreat volume, which, when traced by such a sympathi-ance, than a girl of mortal strain lays aside the gay dress zing hand as the author of the little volume now before us, outdoes every other in wild and varied interest. We are hurried in these pages from the calm creations of the architect, to the stormy workings of the marshalled host; "The females which escape are destined to found new and again from the fierce wars to the faithful loves which colonies, and at first do all the work of neuters; in this parmoralize the song. This is no exaggeration, as we shall ticular resembling the mother wasp: but prior to their conspeedily prove by a few stories, which if told of two-structing a new habitation, they make themselves voluntary legged "human mortals," would each have been of themselves sufficient to have given interest to an "historical novel." Take first a trait of maternal affection in that most amiable and fascinating creature the spider :

in which she has flirted with a hundred beaux, to put on the plain household garb, and sit down the unsolicited wife of an honest man:

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prisoners, by throwing off their wings. So extraordinary a dismemberment requires to be supported by the testimony of an eye-witness. Accordingly Huber, who made the experiment, states, that having induced an ant to mount a and covered it with a glass bell: scarcely did she perceive straw, he placed it on a table sprinkled with a little earth, the earth which covered the bottom of her abode, when she

extended her wings, with some effort bringing them before her head, crossing them in every direction, throwing them from side to side, and producing so many singular contortions, that her four wings fell off at the same moment in his presence. After this change, she reposed, brushed her corslet, traversed the ground, evidently seeking for a place of

"A spider, to be met with under clods of earth, may frequently be seen to carry a silken globe full of eggs, fixed to its body. The tenacity of affection exhibited towards this, its sole treasure, is truly touching; nothing, not even its life, is valued in comparison with this little globe. If an attempt be made to deprive it of this valued deposit, it strenuously resists: take it away entirely, and the insect remains motionless and rooted to the spot, stupified and melancholy; restore it, and you restore the animal to life; it eagerly seizes it, and runs off to place it in a securer spot. "Bonnel threw one of those spiders, to whose abdomen For the benefit of those who love to trace nations the bag of eggs was attached, into the den of the ant-lion. | gradually advancing in civilization through the hunting

shelter.'"

pastoral, and agricultural stages, it may be interesting to | right, and of which we have often revolved all the adknow, that the ants have attained to the second: vantages. From the preacher, therefore, it is argued, "The ants keep and feed certain other insects, from which we cannot expect to hear much that is new; and to the they extract a sweet and nutritious liquid, in the same man-iteration of what we already know, however important ner as we obtain milk from cows. There are two species these truths may be, we always listen with diminished of insects from which the ant tribe abstract this juice-the interest, and not unfrequently with listlessness, or even aphides, or plant-lice, and the gall insects. In the proper season, any person, who may choose to be at the pains of with impatience. All this may be admitted without watching their proceedings, may see, as Linnæus says, the derogation from the praise of the preacher, and the utility ants ascending trees that they may milk their cows, the of preaching, since it is not less important to remind, than aphides. The substance which is here called milk is a sac- to instruct, us of our duty; nor less difficult to combat charine fluid, which these insects secrete; it is scarcely in- the passions successfully, than to convince the underferior to honey in sweetness, and issues in limpid drops from standing. In printed discourses, however, other excelthe body of the insect, by two little tubes placed, one on each lences will be required, since they are necessarily deside, just above the abdomen. When no ants happen to be at hand to receive this treasure, the insects eject it to a dis- prived of those adventitious circumstances which give Even if intended extance, by a jerking motion which, at regular intervals, they interest to a spoken exhortation. give their bodies. When the ants, however, are in attend- clusively for the family fireside on a Sabbath evening, we ance, they carefully watch the emission of this precious expect to find in them more novelty of arrangement, fluid, and immediately suck it down. The ants not only more elegance of composition, and a closer train of consume this fluid when voluntarily ejected by the aphides, reasoning, than might be necessary or proper for the but, what is still more surprising, they know how to make them yield it at pleasure; or, in other terms, to milk them. pulpit. And it is only when we have good reason to On this occasion, the antennæ of the ants discharge the believe that they may nevertheless be generally useful, same functions as the fingers of a milk-maid: with these that we feel ourselves called upon to suspend strict critiorgans moved very rapidly, they pat the abdomen of an cism, and excuse mediocrity, in a volume of sermons. aphides first on one side and then on the other; a little drop of the much-coveted juice immediately issues forth, which the ant eagerly conveys to its mouth."

But this is not all:

"The yellow ants collect a large herd of a kind of aphis, which derives its nutriment from the roots of grass and other plants. These milch kine they remove from their native plants, and domesticate in their habitations, affording, as Huber justly observes, an example of almost human industry and sagacity. On turning up the nest of the yellow ant, this naturalist saw one day a variety of aphides either wandering about in the different chambers, or attached to the roots of plants, which penetrated into the interior. The ants appeared to be extremely jealous of their stock of cattle; they followed them about, and caressed them, whenever they wished for the honeyed juice, which the aphis never refused to yield. On the slightest appearance of danger, they took them up in their mouths, and gently removed them to a more sheltered and secure spot. They dispute with other ants for them, and, in short, watch them as keenly as any pastoral people would guard the herds which form wealth."

By the Goddesses! were we not the Editor of the Edinburgh Literary Journal, we could wish to be an insect!

Seriously speaking, however, this is an excellent book of its kind, and admirably fitted to make part of a family library. Its style is neat and unostentatious. There is prefixed to it a general description of the structure and characteristics of insects, sufficient to serve as an introduction to entomology. The body of the work contains a great fund of solid information regarding these curious creatures, and the warmth and interest with which it is communicated, though to some they may seem overstrained, are the very features of the book which recommend it to us, as they must have a strong effect in exciting a love of study in the young mind. We could have wished that more attention had been paid to classification, which, without taking from the book one jot of its interest, would have greatly enhanced its value, by making it an introduction to systematic knowledge.

But

be this as it may, the work is well worthy the attention and patronage of all parents.

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We had lately occasion to remark, in reviewing a work on much the same plan with that now before us, that we did not think the publication of Communion Services either necessary or desirable. If translated into a foreign language, Mr Carstairs' book might indeed command a partial circulation among those who are ignorant of the usages of our church, but we fear there is little chance of its becoming very popular at home. The young divine needs no formulary for an exercise so plain and so familiar to him; and the Christian layman cannot, either with his family or in his closet, enter into the proper spirit of discourses which are addressed immediately, and intended, we may say, exclusively, for those who are just about to take into their hands the symbols of the atoning sacrifice. Of the important truths, and the very texts which must constitute the principal part of a communion service, what Christian is ignorant,-or who requires even to be reminded of those remarkable passages, save at a time when they derive almost miraculous energy from the presence of the consecrated elements of communion? Besides, the author of such a volume is little more than its editor, for it will necessarily contain much that is not particular to him, but common to every minister in the church.

Such are our objections to this volume, or rather to such works in general. But we should be doing justice neither to Mr Carstairs' merits, nor to our own feelings, did we stop here. We do not see how his task could have been executed more judiciously than he has done it. His style is both chaste and elegant; and in the six discourses which this volume contains, we find a variety of illustration, a force of application, and a fervour of deve tion, which are well calculated to impress us with a good opinion of the author's talents and principles. He is apparently a scholar, and evidently a man of taste; and should he again appear before the public in a literary ca pacity, we shall take up his volume with no small degree of prepossession in its favour.

Political Economy. An Enquiry into the Natural Grounds of Right to Vendible Property or Wealth. By Samuel Read. Edinburgh: Printed for the Author; and sold by Oliver and Boyd. 1829. 8vo. Pp. 398.

POLITICAL ECONOMY, that science which professes to investigate the laws which regulate the production and distribution of wealth, could not arrive at any perfection in a state of society, where the natural course of things was interrupted and constrained by factitious enactments. Its laws had not their free course under the Roman republic, which, though free itself, lived upon the plunder of other states; and still less had they their free course

structed comprehensive systems of political economy.
They differed in some slight degree, but not more than
was to be expected in two inventors of a science, arriving
at nearly the same conclusions from different starting-
places. Gournay had been educated as a merchant, while
Quesnay's life had been almost exclusively spent among
the agricultural part of the community.
The systems
of both are, doubtless, deficient; but they have the merit
of being the first who viewed the science in all its ex-
tent as comprehending at once the question respecting
the source of national wealth, and that respecting the
most efficacious way of making it available for the le-
gitimate ends of government.

under the empire. They had not their free course under the feudal system, which gradually grew up out of the anarchy and confusion consequent upon the downfall of the empire; and which, in fact, was no civil system-but an uncontrolled and organised army, permanently encamped in Europe, and arbitrarily appropriating the products of honest industry. These laws did not even begin to operate till about the sixteenth century, when the insubordination of powerful vassals had shaken the feudal fabric, and wealth and knowledge in the hands of the middle class had fairly thrown down some of its fortifications. It was not till after the Reformation that the individual began to count for something, and that governments, feeling the old pillars of their power falling away Through the intercourse kept up between the literati from beneath them, began to look round for other de- of this country and those of France, the progress which fences. Schemes of finance on the one hand, and projects Political Economy made there was laid before the inhafor increasing national and personal wealth on the other, bitants of Great Britain in detached essays, and particucame now to be discussed, and with interest. The science larly by Tucker and Hume. But Sir James Stewart of Political Economy is coeval with the new order of Denham and Dr Adam Smith (both of them nearly things, and has kept pace with its progress. Italy, while about the same time) were the first who gave complete it was free, and then England and Holland, were the first views of the science. Sir James's work is by no means countries in which such speculations were entered upon. destitute of merit; but the superior genius and originality The Feudal System had never taken deep root in Italy; of the "Wealth of Nations" threw it so completely into and in the other two nations it had met with the rudest the shade, that it is now scarcely ever mentioned. Smith's shocks. In all of these countries, we find early discus- work went wellnigh to exhaust the subject. He estasions on monopolies, the freedom of the sea, and financial blished the great source of wealth to be labour, aided and operations. There is much that is valuable in their old perfected by the division of labour, the accumulation of works on this subject; but in all of them the question is capital, and the invention of machinery. He established treated partially, without reference to general principles, the laws by which the wealth thus produced was divided or its bearing upon cognate subjects. These states, as among the community; and made a bold guess at the they were the freest, were also the most flourishing, in proportions. He defined value and price, and nearly exEurope; and it is not in the day of success that man is hausted the subject of the nature and effects of a circuladisposed to take far-searching views into futurity. It is ting medium. If he did not originate, he carried far tothe unfortunate, who, in order to avoid still greater de- wards its solution, the question respecting the requisites pression, looks anxiously about, and lays deep schemes. of a standard of value, the possibility of a perfect standard, and the best substitute. In the finance department, he threw a great deal of light on the hitherto obscure question, what were the means least oppressive for the subject, and most available for raising the necessary supplies for government. In addition to all this, he rendered the intricate question of public credit much more manageable.

It was about the close of the seventeenth century, and in Scotland at that time impoverished by a long-continued state of anarchy, and doubly sensible of its poverty from its intimate connexion with a proud and opulent neighbour-that the first scientific attempt was made to ascertain the generative principle of national wealth. The person who undertook this task was Paterson, the planner of the Bank of England, and projector of the Darien Scheme. We may, on some other occasion, return to the consideration of his works, and their effects upon the subsequent commercial enterprise of Scotland; at present, the thread of our narrative forces us to attend to a man of much more questionable genius, and much more equivocal character. Law of Laurieston, a person of sanguine disposition, but of a clear calculating head, had early turned his attention to speculations on the commerce of money. He had extended and corrected his notions on the subject, by all the information he could obtain from the goldsmiths of Edinburgh, who then conducted all the comparatively limited money transactions of Scotland; and he had published a work on the subject about the time of the Union. Obliged to fly the country by the unhappy consequences of a duel, he arrived in France at a period when the disordered state of its finances had made its rulers ready to catch at any chance of retrieving themselves. Law's ideas on the subject were consonant to his character-the plan he proposed for restoring the shattered circumstances of France, being nothing else than gambling on a large scale; but the case was urgent, and it was adopted. It is not our part to enquire curiously how much of the failure which ensued was owing to radical defects in the scheme, and how much to the childish avarice of the government-it is enough that the bubble burst, leaving the French with a taste for financial speculations, and an overpowering necessity for prosecuting them.

Having thus got to France, and our object being with the science alone, we pass unnoticed mere practical financiers, however acute, to come to Quesnay and Gournay, two philosophers, who, much about the same time, con

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From the time of Adam Smith to Malthus, little was done, except to give a better arrangement to his materials, and occasionally more distinctness to the enunciation of his doctrines; or to lop off certain redundancies in the way of metaphysical discussions and statistical details, which at times obscured and retarded the progress of his argument. Malthus has distinguished himself in the science mainly by his having been the first to suggest the new and generally received theory of rent, and by his disquisitions on the principles of population. The originality of his views on this latter subject has been with justice called in question; and the value of his application of them to questions of general politics, is more than doubtful; but there can be no question of the service he has rendered to political economy, by making the investigation an integrant part of that science. The good he has done, by his attempt to introduce definitions into, the science is more ambiguous. Definitions are of use in mathematical science, where any deficiency of expression may be checked to the eye; but in those sciences which treat of abstract conceptions, not palpable to the senses, they lead astray from the truth of nature, by substituting the arbitrary conceptions of an individual.The merits of Ricardo consist chiefly in his having corrected several inaccuracies of his predecessors, in his having communicated more precision to the several doctrines, and in his having given a more strictly logical connexion to the whole.

Thus, then, the science stands at present. It has been objected to it by some, that it lowers the tone of the intellect, and accustoms it to a narrow-minded and mechanical way of viewing great national questions. This objection proceeds upon a misconception of the science. It

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