Mr Spence's plan for getting real wealth from India, like his plan for getting it from the West Indies, shows an unusual kind of knowledge of the subject. He says, that the only way in which any national profit could be drawn from our East India territories, would be from taxes levied upon the inhabitants there, and transmitted to England.' * This, we conceive, is exactly what is done at present. Taxes are really levied upon the inhabitants there, and transmitted to England in goods; and the only effect of transmitting them in bullion instead, would be, that the bullion, on account of its greater plenty here, compared with India, would go out again as fast as possible for the goods; and we really are a little at a loss to conjecture, how this double voyage, or the bringing home one commodity instead of another which is more wanted, should at once make our connexion with India profitable, when it was unprofitable before. Mr Spence, as a kind of corollary to his grand doctrine about commerce of import, indulges himself in a few financial speculations; and we are truly sorry that we cannot compliment him on a greater degree of skill, in this branch of political economy, than in others. He says, that the arguments made use of to show that no national wealth is derived from commerce of import, will serve also to show the absurdity of their notions who talk of the importance of such and such branches of commerce, because of the great duties which are levied on them at the custom-house or excise-office. Such reasoners will insist upon the vast value of our East India trade, because of the three or four millions which the public revenue derives from the duties imposed on the articles imported from thence. They do not consider that all such duties are finally paid by the consumers of the articles on which they are laid; and that these consumers are equally able to pay the sums they advance, whether or not they consume the articles on which they are levied.' He then instances the cases of the consumers of tea and ale; and intimates, that if they were to substitute for them the wholesome beverage of water, they would not only have the same, but a much greater power of contributing to the state in taxes. We would recommend to Mr Spence to improve this hint, and to suggest to his Majesty's ministers the propriety of obliging all people, by law, to contine themselves to mere necessaries, that what they now spend in conveniences and luxuries may be at the disposal of the government. As this is at present a prodigiously large sum, it might answer their purpose completely, and enable them to carry on the war with vigour ad infinitum. Yet, somehow or other, we Ff2 shrewdly shrewdly suspect, that this fund, great as it is at present, would in a few years most rapidly diminish. The same people who are now seen exerting every nerve to obtain tea, sugar, wine, ale, tobacco, &c. would, we are afraid, soon slacken their efforts, when they were convinced by experience that they were never to enjoy these objects of their desire, but were to pay the sum that would have purchased them into the exchequer. Mr Spence has chosen, as the motto for his pamphlet, a passage from Hume's Essays on Commerce. We wish that, instead of fixing his attention upon so small a part, he had read and digested the whole. He would then have learned, that, in the common course of human affairs, sovereigns must take mankind as they find them, and cannot pretend to introduce any violent change in their principles and ways of thinking; that the less natural any set of principles are which support a particular society, the more difficulty will a legislator meet in raising and cultivating them; that that policy is violent which aggrandizes the public by the poverty of individuals; and that, as our passions are the only causes of labour, these must be called forth by adequate incitements, or (except under very peculiar circumstances) industry, and its offspring, production, will infallibly languish. It is not enough for a chancellor of the exchequer to recommend to his Majesty's subjects to leave off tea and ale, that they may be better able to pay taxes, unless his eloquence in favour of war has power to persuade them to like paying taxes, as well as drinking tea and ale. Nor do we think that Mr Spence will succeed in convincing the good people of England to go without wine, and to hoard Birmingham manufactures, unless he can communicate to them the same extraordinary passion for hardware which he himself seems to possess. In these matters, as Hume says, we must take mankind as we find them: And though we feel ourselves, in some sort, bound by the office we have undertaken, to enter our protest against any striking depravity in the public taste; yet, in this instance, we are disposed to be silent, and to leave people to their own tastes and judgments in regard to what most contributes to their happiness. To say the truth, indeed, we are ourselves inclined to go with the stream in this particular and though we abhor excess, we should decidedly prefer *One of Mr Spence's most conflant themes, is his ftrong preference for manufactures of an unperishable nature, compared with thofe which are fpeedily confumed, and leave not a wreck behind. This is another of his doctrines, which he did not learn from the Economists. Their fyftem is dreadfully mangled in his hands. He has retained their errors, and rejected their excellences. * prefer a present of a glass of claret, or port, to refresh us after the weary task of reviewing Mr Spence, to the hardest and most everlasting button that was ever constructed. Nor would the consciousness of our being able to hoard such articles to an immense amount,' in any degree alter our decision, having neither inclination, nor warehouses, for such a species of hoarding; and having, besides, those dull intellects alluded to by Mr Spence, which prevent us from seeing that Sir Richard Arkwright's great fortune arose from his spending his gains in hardware, instead of tea and sugar. We rather think, indeed, that the fact is against Mr Spence in the present instance; and that, if he will take the trouble to analyze Sir Richard Arkwright's capital, divesting himself for a moment of the idea of a circulating medium, he will find, that by far the largest part of it consisted in flour, meal, tea, sugar, ale, gin, rum, tobacco, soap, candles, and wearing apparel as the wages of his workmen, added to a great stock of raw cotton, and as little manufactured cotton as he could help; all articles, these, which in a few years would leave not a wreck, or at least only a rag behind. The other great branch of Sir Richard Arkwright's capital, would indeed be found of a more durable nature-machinery; but its value, we conceive, by no means arises merely from the circumstance of its hardness, but from its power of saving human labour, and of rendering consumeable commodities more abundant and cheaper. We have the greatest possible respect, as our readers already know, for the accumulation of capital, considering it as the great mean of future production, and of future consumption,-but no respect whatever for an accumulation of pots and pans, or knives and scissars beyond the use of the possessor, or the wants of his customers,-for such an accumulation, in short, as would be the result of depriving ourselves of wine, to hoard our Birmingham manufactures. Our difference with Mr Spence, in this respect, we conceive, must arise from the very different opinions we have of the nature of capital, and of the objects of which it is composed. We intended to have noticed a few other topics in Mr Spence's production, such as his deviation from the economists into a wrong path on the subject of price; † his inconsistency in allowing home. Ff3 made * P. 55. On the fubject of price, the economists may boast a fuperiority over Adam Smith; but we cannot reconcile their juft views, in general, on this important point, with the very falfe doctrine which they apply to commerce, that, Les prix précédent toujours les achats, et les ventes. Phyfiogratie, Vol. II. p. 259. Aually furmounted, from the fear, as the informs us, the charge of extravagance. This, therefore, must e many inftances, in which the miracles of truth have the level of fiction, and in which imaginary muft yield eter of Elifabeth, as here drawn, is in its general form fuch, as might, we think, have been expected from the lady-artist. It is fo natural that women fhould love to heroines a little heroic! that they fhould delight to place llence in attitudes noble no lefs than charming! that, > us the empire of perfonal, and perhaps of intellectual y fhould ftill maintain an equal claim to the moral subhat higher fort of greatnefs which, like angels, feems o fex! te women who have any real elevation of thought, no. be more difgufting than the character of a Thaleftris. , as much as we do, the vigorous females who appear to the link between the fexes; and will not condefcend to hiftory of a virago, who is the exact duplicate of her vers, fights and drubs every one of them whofe offers difr, and bestows her hand only on him who is found to ronger and harder one of his own. Their heroine is in it ftyle. Perhaps the is not particularly diftinguifhed even chaftened loftinefs which may confift with virgin delicaLoftinefs of a Portia or a Corinne, of la dame Romaine or triomphante; perhaps fhe is not even an Elifabeth, innoand, as it were unconsciously magnanimous; but is repres all gentleness and diffidence. Still we fhall find her inled through fcenes which fhow her to poffefs fortitude and ftednefs and other virtues of the first order; we fhall be into refpect, where we were defired only to love; with aknefs that folicits protection, we fhall find blended, not I the sweetness that attracts, but much alfo of the dignity nobles it. are aware of the numerous exceptions to this rule; but, is not therefore imaginary, may appear from a reference to elphines and Corinnes of France; and to the Cecilias, the s, and the Belindas of England. In the fame manner, the ations of female excellence by the other fex, often prefent us a figure of imperial majefty; but we cannot help thinking when they draw after their own notions and conceptions rathan from books, they are more likely to give us an Ophelia Defdemona. dame Cottin has, in one refpect, been particularly happy. ine has been educated in fuch folitude and inacquaintance with |
