Within the limits to which we are necessarily confined, it is impossible for us to enter into that wide and important subject of enquiry. Neither shall we do Mr. Tooke the injustice to introduce extracts which would but imperfectly explain his views. The whole of those parts of his book which treat of the influence of increasing issues of paper money on the rate of interest, and of the inadequacy of the rate of the foreign exchanges to operate as a warning against too great an enlargement of the circulating medium, are well deserving of an attentive perusal. He has traced, briefly, but clearly, much of the existing embarrassments of the country, to the lowering of the rate of interest and the consequent facilities of accommodation, by the operation of a paper currency, rapidly and excessively enlarged by the cupidity, the folly, or the necessities of those who were intrusted with its creation.

It would be inconsistent with our purpose, to dwell upon the influence of a currency, such as we are here examining, in aggravating the evils and impeding the remedies of a scarcity of the necessaries of life, in disturbing the natural and regular relations of commerce, deceiving alike the foreign and the home trader, — in varying contracts, and working, at times, by the mere operation of altered prices, complete changes of property, raising some to sudden riches and plunging others into ruin against which it is impossible to provide. Neither do we think it necessary, after what we have already said, to engage in a formal proof, that all sudden and large augmentations of a convertible paper currency must endanger, necessarily and imminently, the solvency of those who issue it. Of the manner in which this must happen, the country has lately had ample and instructive illustration. In as much as the quantity of gold, (supposing gold to be, as it is with us, the standard of the currency,) must always in such a currency bear a small proportion to the whole circulating medium, the exportation of a comparatively small quantity, when the currency is so dilated as to turn the course of foreign trade, will produce, at best, a dangerous vacuum. But if the increase and depreciation of the currency be so great as to occasion a violent and sudden influx of foreign commodities and a violent and sudden efflux of gold to pay the balance upon them, what must be the result? The banks are besieged by applicants for gold in exchange for paper; alarmed at the run, they contract their issues; the current however still continues, and gold is unceasingly demanded to supply it; at length the numbers become so great of those who seek to convert paper into gold for profit, that others become alarmed, and apply to the banks for specie through a fear of their insolvency; gold is now hoarded: credit, without which commerce, at home or abroad, cannot exist for a day, is destroyed; and a panic spreads like the blast of a hurricane throughout the country, involving in promiscuous ruin the hollow and the substantial, the innocent and the guilty.

We have but a few words to add, in order to close our analysis of the principles which regulate the value of money. It is of some importance, with reference to the measures which have been lately proposed to parliament, to consider what regulates the quantity of the circulating medium when it is composed partly of the precious metals and partly of paper currency. And here an obvious dis tinction arises. First, the metallic part of the currency may be of the same denomination with that of a part of the paper currency ; for instance, there may be both sovereigns and one pound notes; or secondly, the lowest denomination of notes may be higher than the highest denomination of coin; for instance, notes, for no lower sum than 57. each, may circulate in company with sovereigns. Let it be remembered that we here suppose the paper convertible into coin.

In the former case, it is evident that the coin would soon disappear, for the same reason that we before assigned for its disappearance, when speaking of the exportation of coin where there is an inconvertible paper currency. Upon this subject it is now need less to reason. We have had ample proof, in recent and present experience, that coins and notes of the same denomination with coins cannot circulate together. It may be said of this country, that it has been for some time, as to its currency, divided into two sections; one, comprising the metropolis and Lancashire, enjoying a currency consisting of paper-money of which the lowest denomin ations are 51. notes, and sovereigns and subsidiary coins for all lower payments. In this section the sovereigns and the notes have existed together with great harmony and much public advantage. But in the other section, comprising all the rest of England, one pound notes enjoy an empire which, notwithstanding repeated irruptions of sovereigns, has been constantly maintained against them. The experiment has been repeatedly and fully tried. Sovereigns and one pound notes have been repeatedly placed to→ gether, and the former have been uniformly expelled. It would be easy to show how much it must always be the interest, for a time at least, of the issuers of paper that the paper should displace the coin, and how completely they have it in their power to effect this object. But the fact needs no illustration. And it is almost superfluous to add, that the quantity of the currency is in this case quite as much dependent upon the will of those who issue notes, as in any of the cases we have already examined.

Payments are in every country of two kinds; those which take place between dealers and dealers, as where a grocer buys goods from a merchant, and those which take place between dealers and consumers, as when an individual for the use of his family buys a pound of tea from a grocer. The total amount of goods bought and sold between dealers and dealers, (except what are destined for foreign trade,) must be the same with that bought and sold between dealers and consumers; for one dealer buys from another only in proportion as the consumers, his customers, buy from him.

For the former payments, it is evident, that a much larger amount of currency must be required, than for the latter. The payments of dealers to each other are for large masses of commodities, and are therefore made in large sums. The portion of the currency destined to this purpose, therefore, circulates more slowly. The payments of consumers to dealers are made for a multitude of small portions of commodities, and therefore in small portions of the currency which circulates with great rapidity. A grocer who makes a hundred purchases in a month, probably sells the commodities so purchased, in the same interval of time, in 100,000 small portions. It is evident, then, that the total amount in value of the currency required for main payments must be very much larger than that required for retail payments. And it it also evident, that if, for example, the money usually employed for main payments be notes of 51. and upwards, and the money in use for retail transac¬ tions consist of sovereigns, shillings, and pence, since there is great economy in the use of the latter, owing to the rapidity of their circulation, any portion which may be suddenly withdrawn from it will be much less easily spared than a proportionate subtraction from the currency of higher denomination.

A certain quantity, however, of the lower currency is absolutely necessary for the ordinary purposes of society; and if there be no disturbing causes, we have already seen that where the currency is metallic, this quantity will be just so much and no more, as, according to the value of the precious metal, will suit those ordinary purposes of the country. Now, in the case we have supposed, of sovereigns circulating with a paper currency whose highest denomination is 57., let us assume that, for any cause, the precious metals are exported. There will be a run upon the banks made by the holders of paper money for two purposes; first, for the purpose of exporting the gold received in exchange: and secondly, to obtain sovereigns for supplying, in the usual channels in which the smaller currency runs, the void created by that exportation. Sovereigns, in short, will become scarce, and the banks will be called on to supply them. If therefore the currency, established on such a system, can be so suddenly and violently enlarged as to produce, by a change in foreign trade, a great drain of sovereigns, the danger of the banks will be rather increased than diminished by a prohibition to issue notes of a smaller denomination than 5l.

But is there, in such a state of the currency, any security against an excessive enlargement of the circulating medium? We answer, none, except, as before, the will of those who issue that part of it which consists of paper currency. Until the change takes place in foreign trade which produces an exportation of the sovereigns, there will be no inducement to exchange the paper for gold, for it will pass current as the representative of gold, and there will be a sufficient number of sovereigns in circulation to answer all the

purposes of retail payments. Until then, therefore, no check will be applied.

This, then, is the practical conclusion to which we are forced to come; that the measure now in agitation, for making_sovereigns and bank-notes for 57. and upwards the currency of the country, will work benefit or mischief according as the quantity of the precious metal, circulating in the currency, is or is not sufficient to bear occasional and considerable subtraction. If it be not, and if the principle be adhered to, which we need hardly say we firmly believe to be the only sound one, of maintaining a system of cash payment as the basis of our currency, the time must certainly come, and speedily, when the limits of the lower part of our currency shall be extended, and 10l. or 20l. notes shall be the lowest denomination of our paper money.

We, therefore, can for the present only regard the proposed measure as a step towards convalescence, not as a restoration of health. Whether the lowest denomination of notes intended to circulate when this measure shall come into full operation be or be not too low, experience must determine. Of all subjects of legislation those which relate to money and public credit require perhaps the largest induction of facts to make legislation, not merely wise, but safe. The point at which the proportions of our paper currency and our coin are to settle, cannot be ruled by theory, but must be settled by experiment. And it is in the mean time consoling to know, that the principles which now guide the deliberations of parliament, accord, not only with the doctrines which theory would lead us to believe true, but with the practice and experience of almost all enlightened and commercial communities.

NOTICES.

ART. XII. The Last Man. By the Author of Frankenstein.
Post 8vo. 3 Vols. 1. 78.

MRS. Shelley, true to the genius of her family, has found this breathing world and the operations and scenes which enliven it, so little worthy of her soaring fancy, that she once more ventures to create a world of her own, to people it with beings modelled by her own hand, and to govern it by laws drawn from the visionary theories which she has been so long taught to admire as the perfection of wisdom. She seems herself to belong to a sphere different from that with which we are conversant. Her imagination appears to delight in inventions which have no foundation in ordinary occurrences, and no charm for the common sympathies of mankind.

We praise our most successful authors for the fidelity with which they paint the human character, for the simplicity which marks their representations of the living drama of life, and for the air of probability which they are sedulous to observe, even when they borrow most abundantly from the resources of imagination. If Mrs. Shelly is to be set down amongst our popular writers, she will owe her good fortune to the boldness of her departure from all the acknowledged canons of inventive literature; for the whole course of her ambition has been to pourtray monsters which could have existed only in her own conceptions, and to involve them in scenes and events which are wholly unparalleled by any thing that the world has yet witnessed.

This idea of The Last Man' has already tempted the genius of more than one of our poets, and, in truth, it is a theme which appears to open a magnificent and boundless field to the imagination. But we have only to consider it for a moment, in order to be convinced that the mind of man might as well endeavour to describe the transactions which are taking place in any of the countless planets that are suspended beyond our own, as to antici pate the horrors of the day which shall see the dissolution of our system. The utmost efforts of thought are absolutely childish, when they seek to fathom the abyss of ruin, to number the accumulation of disasters, to paint the dreadful confusion, which await that final scene. Every writer who has hitherto ventured on the theme, has fallen infinitely beneath it. Mrs. Shelley, in following their example, has merely made herself ridiculous. She generously permits our orb to roll on in its accustomed course until the year 2100, when the Last Man' is by her fiat left to perish. He is an Englishman, whom she names Verney, and to whom, of course, she assigns a principal part in the conduct of her story, although he is originally brought up in the humblest of rural occupations. Her story commences about the year 2073, when the last of our kings is supposed to have abdicated in compliance with the gentle force of the remonstrances of his subjects, and a republic was instituted.' The view, however, which Mrs. Shelley gives of the practical effects of this system, is by no means an inviting one; the whole of the period which she describes, is remarkable for civil strife, and so difficult did she find it to manage this part of her subject, that she was obliged to change the scene to Greece, in the final liberation of which she employs one of her heroes for she has a number of them. This event accomplished, (we hope, however, that this part of her tale will be anticipated even in our own times,) her dramatis personæ return to England, where pestilence soon destroys the whole population, with the exception of some fourteen or fifteen hundred souls who emigrate to Switzerland. On their way thither they find the continent also desolated, they themselves fall away like blighted ears of corn, till they are