erful Barons with each other, occasioned such frequent demands for money which they knew not how to procure, that the corporations of free cities and burghs, grew up into consequence; partly from purchased privileges, and partly from the riches of the inhabitants, acquired by trade. Hence, commerce began to be better thought of, and this mode of acquiring riches came gradually into respect. Ever since the introduction of the precious metals as the measure of value in commodities offered for exchange, the respect paid to real wealth was by a metastasis universally adopted, associated with its representatives, gold and silver. Hence, the accumulation of these metals, was regarded as the hoarding of real riches, and the exportation of them was prohibited at an early day. A law to this purpose passed while Cicero was consul, (orat. pro Lucio Flacco $ 28.) This ill founded prejudice in favor of accumulating and hoarding gold and silver, appears to have prevailed thoughout Europe, until in England it was first broken through by the remonstrances of the East India Company who in 1600 obtained leave to export the limited sum of £30,000 sterling a year in coin to the East Indies, inasmuch as the goods therewith purchased, when resold in Europe brought a greater amount of the precious metals into the kingdom than was exported. The limitation was repealed in 1663. This ground of objection against the East India trade, was urged as early as Pliny the elder (hist. nat. Lib. 12 Chap. 18.) The political economists have driven this prejudice out of England, where no person of tolerable education entertains it; but in our own country, ignorant men both in Congress and out of it, are still found, who advocate the accu mulation of the precious metals, regarding them not as they really are, the counters by which wealth is calculated, but as constituting in themselves riches, without regard to their use in facilitating commerce.

To this prejudice in favour of the precious metals, we chiefty owe what has been usually called, the mercantile system. Under this system long cherished in Europe, and by no means renounced in those parts where the principles of Political Economy are unattended to, the aim of Government is, to sell much and to buy little-to raise at home every product wanted for consumption-to exclude foreign competition-and o make the rest of the world, debtors. This aim was founded on

the silly fallacy of the Balance of Trade. It was supposed that whenever we sold to a greater amount than we bought, the balance must be paid not in commodities, but in coin. If therefore our exports amounted to a greater value than our imports, the difference would be paid in coin, and riches in the form of gold and silver money, would thus accumulate at home. The advocates of this System, were not aware that if all nations were to deal on this principle, there would be no circulation; that none will buy from us, unless we also buy from them-that money being of use only to facilitate the operations of Commerce, too much of it is a nuisance-that when more money exists in a nation than is necessary to supply the demands of its commerce, it is always exported to countries where it is more valuable because it is more scarce. They were not aware that commodities like waters find their level; or that the value of goods imported must exceed the value of exports, or the exporting nation will lose by the interchange. But of all this, more hereafter.

The mercantile system, its fallacies; and its imperfections, are now well understood in Great Britain, where no legislator ever confounds money with wealth, or talks of the balance of trade, unless in the annual nonsense of the Finance Reports. Of late years however, especially for near half a century past, the mercantile has given way to the manufacturing system; a system equally absurd and selfish, and equally jealous lest our neighbours should profit as well as ourselves. A system of monopoly, exclusive privilege, restriction, and prohibition: a system, which professes to make its gain, by depressing as far as possible the efforts of every other nation who using its natu ral advantages, seeks to make profit by commerce and manufacture as well as ourselves. The loss to Europe by the prevalence of these two systems, has been incalculable. Three fourths at least of all the expense which Great Britain has been at in her wars for these 150 years past, must be put down to the account of these systems; for excepting perhaps her wars with Bonaparte in their commencement, the rest of her quar rels have been mercantile; arising from a base and selfish jealousy of her neighbours participating in the benefits which Great Britain wished to monopolize.

To such a height was the monopolizing spirit of the manufacturing system carried in England, even at an early day, that

agenorat non importation law was passed in favour of the home monopoly in 1463, 3Ed. 4 ch 4. At length the classes of manufacturers and monopolists having interfered with each other to a degree that even themselves felt severely, a general petition, against monopolists was pressed and passed in 1624; but, the evil was only partially remedied; the exclusive privilege of all bodies corporate being saved from its operation. The creating of Corporations and granting of monopolies, was considered in that country, as part of the royal prerogative.

Notwithstanding every man of reasonable information, well knows that the national debt of England must be charged chiefly to the account of the mercantile and manufacturing systems, the mischiefs of those systems were gradually developed in the writings of the political economists only: writings which were never studied by the statesmen who had the government of the affairs of that: country. From Lord Chatham the father, to Wm. Pitt the son every minister of Great Britain, has bent the whole force of his. talents towards parliamentary declamation on party politics. Their opponents, from Ld. Holland the father, to Charles Fox the son, and his coadjutors, took the same course. Not a man in the ministry or in the opposition, during this long period, ever appear to have studied or understood one syllable of the important subjects, treated by the French Economists, or sub.. sequently by Adam Smith and his successors in the same path. Of almost every useful maxim really conducive to the national. prosperity, all these contending politicians were profoundly ignorant. Even Mr. Ch. Fox, the most talented and liberal minded among them, confessed he had no taste for the disquisi tions in Adam Smith's wealth of nations. The selfish and party character, the deplorable lack of useful knowledge that per vades the interminable volumes of the parliamentary debates of the British legislature, is really melancholy to a modern reader; who deplores the misapplication of so much talent to purposes and subjects for the most part so little worthy of the exertion. It was not till the important lessons of the last thirty years, and the powerful disquisitions of Malthus and Ricardo, that the great truths of Political Economy, reached the understandings of the governors of that country. Luckily for Great Britain, Lord Leverpool Mr. Huskisson, and Mr. Canning

have not been above their business: and now for the first time in the British annals, can it be said, that that fine country is under the guidance of men who have the knowledge to understand, and the boldness to practice the maxims most condusive to national prosperity.

The leading features of the mercantile and manufacturing systems are the same: they are both founded on selfish monopoly: nor can one syllable be advanced in opposition to Mr. Storck's reflections upon them in his course of political economy, v. 1, p. 122, first published in French at Petersburg, and which well deserves to be translated into other languages. "It is no exaggeration to affirm, that there are very few practi"cal errors that have produced more mischief than the mercan"tile system. Armed with power, it has commanded and for"bidden where it ought only to have protected. The regulating "mania which it has inspired, has tormented industry a thou

sand ways, to force it from its natural channels. It has made "each nation regard the welfare of its neighbors as incompati"ble with its own. Hence the reciprocal desire of injuring and "impoverishing each other; and hence that spirit of commercial rivalry, which has been the immediate or remote cause "of the greater number of modern wars. It is this system, "which has stimulated nations to employ force or cunning to "extort commercial treaties, productive of no real advantage "to themselves, from the weakness or ignorance of others. It

has formed colonies, that the mother country might enjoy the " monopoly of the trade, and force them to resort exclusively to "her markets. In short, where this system has been productive "of the least injury, it has retarded the progress of national "prosperity, at home and abroad. Every where it has de"luged the earth with blood; and it has depopulated and ruined "some of those very countries whose power and opulence it was "supposed it would have carried to the highest pitch."

The first book, according to Mr. M'Culloch, (Discourse on the Rise and Progress of Political Economy, Edinb. 1824, page 37,) which contained a true and liberal exposition of some of the modern principles of political economy, was the treatise of Sir Dudley North, in 1691, entitled "Discourses on Trade, principally directed to the cases of interest, coinage, clipping and increase of money." But this attracted little notice; and

there is reason to believe, was designedly suppressed. Nothing of importance appeared in England from that time 'till the publication of Sir James Steuart's Principles of Political Economy, about the year 1768, which was completely superceded by Dr. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, in 1776. Political Economy was first treated as a science by the French "Economists;" at the head of whom was Dr. Francois Quesnay, Physician to Louis 14th; who was born in 1694, and died at Verseilles in1774, at the age of 80. In 1758 he published his Tableau Economique, et maximes generales du Gouvernment Economique: 4to Versailles. Colbert, had been the patron of the mercantile and manufacturing systems. Quesnay, in the course of investigating the source and origin of national wealth, came to the conclusion, that the merchant and manufacturer added no new value to the articles of raw material they transported, or whose form they changed, beyond the expenses incurred in producing this change of place, or change of form. Whereas the Earth (indisputably the great source of wealth) not only returned the wages of the labourer, and the profit of the capital employed, but a further surplus in the form of Rent; arising from the aid furnished by the powers of nature, in bringing to perfection the plants and seeds sown in it. Agriculture therefore, did more than change the form of the material employed; it produced a new and useful material; as when one bushel of grain sown, furnished twenty bushels at the harvest. It did more than repay wages and profits of capital, for it produced also, a surplus constituting Rent. The earth therefore, under the operations of the husbandman, was the only source whence new and additional substances, the bases of individual and national wealth, could be produced. This new and additional product according to him, was the cause why the earth besides returning the expenses laid out upon it, yielded a Rent. Hence, he maintained that this new surplus furnished by cultivating the earth, and the Rent founded on it, were the only foundation of wealth, whether to the individual or to the nation; for commerce and manufactures were exclusively employed in furnishing, not a new product, but a change of place, or a change of form in that material which previously existed. In pursuance of these ideas, he held that all taxes except a land tax might be abolished, and the whole system of finance simplified by resorting at

1