And shews despairing eyes the midnight hour Not even the dead find refuge in the tomb The sick bed scene is a fine specimen of the author's talent in the selection of significant circumstances; no pomp and accumulation of words could so effectually make us both hear the din of artillery, and feel the horrors of a siege. It will be a consolation to Mr G. and our readers to be informed, that, notwithstanding the devastation which overspread one-third of Copenhagen, and the hideousness of which can scarcely be exaggerated, few lives comparatively were lost; the total number, according to the bills of mortality, was 282. We would not pick any quarrel with Mr. G. at parting; but we must tell him, that his versification, in many cases, is very uncouth, and would not be endured in ordinary writers. Much of his poetry derives no attraction from its rhythmical form, and would be quite as forcible if reduced into prose. He will not, we apprehend, be greatly ashamed of an imputation, which Horace seems to have thought distinctive of a genuine poet, and which the rabble of superior versifiers may be assured they will never incur. Art. XIV. Commerce defended: An Answer to the Arguments by which Mr. Spence, Mr. Cobbett, and others, have attempted to prove that Commerce is not a Source of National Wealth. Second Edition. By James Mill, Esq. 8vo. pp. 154. Price 4s. Baldwin. 1808. HIS Pamphlet is, in our opinion, a very satisfactory answer to Mr. Spence, and the other advocates of the Economist System. It is much more. Its value consists not merely in refuting some dangerous errors, of momentary interest, but also in developing and displaying general principles in political science, which apply to all periods and places, and which are unhappily too little understood among the first commercial people on the globe. It is indeed curious to think how many persons of profound and elegant attainments will here learn, for the first time, some elements of that valuable philosophy, which we chiefly owe to the sagacity and labours of Adam Smith. A familiar acquaintance with this philosophy, and a remarkable acuteness and dexterity in applying its principles, are characteristic merits of the writer now before us; and this we consider as no common praise. A detailed account of the pamphlet is in great measure rendered unnecessary by our criticism on Mr. Spence's publication; (Vol. III. p. 1052.) our sentiments on most of the subjects have already been delivered, and are in substance the same that Mr. Mill has more amply unfolded in this work. He arranges his remarks under the following heads:-on the Security of the British Commerce, for which he says we need not be alarmed from any consideration of the French power, unless we destroy the neutral shipping trade ;-on Land, as a source of wealth,on the terms Wealth and Prosperity,-on Manufactures, -on Commerce, of Import, and of Export,on Consumption,-on the National Debt,-General Reflections, on the expediency of making Peace with France. In the second chapter, he remarks the unfair prudence of Mr. Spence and others, who maintain with the Economists that land is the only source of wealth, in declining to urge the necessary deduction from this principle, that land is the only proper subject of taxation. He successfully attacks Mr. Spence's definition of Wealth, "abundance of capital, of cultivated and productive land, and of those things which man usually esteemis valuable," by showing that capital" is quite as ambiguous as "wealth," that the third article includes the other two, that air, light, and water, valuable as they may be, are not wealth, and that abundance of capital, &c. is the vulgar, not the philosophical idea of wealth; he uses the term in its proper and comprehensive sense, as denoting articles which have a value in exchange. In one instance Mr. Spence seems to have been betrayed into a principle even of the Commercialists, that the balance of rade in favour of a nation is a source of wealth, or in fact that it is enriched by the accumulation of gold and silver which it obtains in payment of the excess of exports over imports. He says Great Britain imports regularly as much as she exports, and for that reason gains nothing by her export trade. Yet he explicitly admits, on the other hand, that gold and silver are not more to be desired than any other species of wealth. The consequence of these two tenets together is plain; " if, in order to gain by our commerce of export, we must receive neither goods nor money, we see no alternative that is left, except giving our goods away for nothing." There are some useful remarks on Mr. Spence's preference of durable to perishable articles as constituents of national wealth, for which we must refer to the pamphlet. The chapter on Consumption furnishes a clear exposition of Dr. Smith's views on the nature and causes of a nation's progress or declension in prosperity; and it amply confutes, though indirectly, the ridiculous, yet very popular notion, that to consume or destroy articles of manufacture is "good for trade." As an excellent specimen of Mr. Mill's acuteness and power of abstraction, we shall quote his remarks on the apprehensions of the Economists, lest capital should increase too fast, and the production of commodities should increase beyond" the market" for disposing of them. No proposition in political economy seems to be more certain than this which I am going to announce, how paradoxical soever it may at first sight appear; and if it be true, none undoubtedly can be deemed of more importance. The production of commodities creates, and is the one and universal cause which creates a market for the commodities produced. Let us but consider what is meant by a market. Is any thing else understood by it, than that something is ready to be exchanged for the commodity which we would dispose of? When goods are carried to market, what is wanted is somebody to buy. But to buy, one must have wherewithal to pay. It is obviously therefore the collective means of payment which exist in the whole nation that constitute the entire market of the nation? But wherein consist the collective means of payment of the whole nation? Do they not consist in its annual produce, in the annual revenue of the ge neral mass of its inhabitants? But if a nation's power of purchasing is exactly measured by its annual produce, as it undoubtedly is; the more you increase the annual produce, the more by that very act you extend the national market, the power of purchasing and the actual purchases of the nation. Whatever be the additional quantity of goods therefore which is at any time created in any country, an additional power of purchasing, exactly equivalent, is at the same instant created; so that a nation can never be naturally overstocked either with capital or with commodities; as the very operation of capital makes a vent for its produce. Mr. Spence in one place advises his reader to consider the circumstances of a country in which all exchange should be in the way of barter, as the idea of money frequently tends to perplex. If he will follow his own advice on this occasion, he will easily perceive how necessarily production creates a market for produce. When money is laid out of the question, is it not in reality the different commodities of the country, that is to say, the different articles of the annual produce, which are annually exchanged against one another? Whether these commodities are in great quantities or in small, that is to say, whether the country is rich or poor, will not one half of them always balance the other? and is it not the barter of one half of them with the other which actually constitutes the annual purchases and sales of the country? Is it not the one half of the goods of a country which universally forms the market for the other half, and vice versa? And is this a market that can ever be overstocked """ All that here can ever be requisite is, that the goods should be adapted to one another; that is to say, that every man who has goods to dispose of, should always find all those different sorts of goods with which he wishes to supply himself in return. What is the difference when the goods are in great quantity and when they are in small? Only this, that in the one case the people are liberally supplied with goods, in the other that they are scantily; in the one case that the country is rich, in the other that it is poor: but in the one case, as well as in the other, the whole of the goods will be exchanged, the one half against the other; and the market will always be equal to the supply. Thus it appears that the demand of a nation is always equal to the produce of a nation. This indeed must be so; for what is the demand of a nation? The demand of a nation is exactly its power of purchasing. But what is its power of purchasing? The extent undoubtedly of its annual produce. The extent of its demand therefore and the extent of its supply are always exactly commensurate. Every particle of the annual produce of a country falls as revenue to somebody. But every individual in the nation uniformly makes purchases, or does what is equivalent to making purchases, with every farthing's worth which accrues to him. All that part which is destined for mere consumption is evidently employed in purchases. That too which is employed as capital is not less so. It is either paid as wages to labourers, who immediately buy with it food and other necessaries, or it is employed in the purchase of raw materials. The whole annual produce of the country, therefore, is employed in making purchases. But as it is the whole annual produce too which is offered to sale, it is visible that the one part of it is employed in purchasing the other: that how great soever that annual produce may be it always creates a market to itself and that how great soever that portion of the annual produce which is destined to administer to re-production, that is,how great soever the portion employed as capital, its effects always are to render the country richer and its inhabitants more opulent, but never to confuse or to overload the national market. I own that nothing appears to me more completely demonstrative than this reasoning.' It may be necessary, however, to remark, that a nation may easily have more than enough of any one commodity, though she can never have more than enough of commodities in general. The quantity of any one commodity may easily be carried beyond its due proportion; but by that very circumstance is implied that some other commodity is not provided in sufficient proportion. What indeed is meant by a commodity's exceeding the market? Is it not that there is a portion of it for which there is nothing that can be had in exchange? But of those other things then the proportion is too small. A part of the means of production which had been applied to the preparation of this superabundant commodity, should have been applied to the preparation of those other commodities till the balance between them had been established Whenever this balance is properly preserved, there can be no superfluity of commodities, none for which a market will not be ready. This balance too the natural order of things has so powerful a tendency to produce, that it will always be very exactly preserved, where the injudicious tampering of government does not prevent, or those disorders in the intercourse of the world, produced by the wars into which the inoffending part of mankind are plunged, by the folly much more frequently than by the wisdom of their rulers." We took occasion to notice the dangerous consequence of confounding the consumption of wealth, with the employment of it; this consequence is very intrepidly sustained by Mr. Spence. He thinks "the national debt," or more properly the national expenditure," has given a most beneficial stimulus to agriculture," by converting every now and then twenty or thirty millions of what was destined for capital, into consumable revenue;" the meaning of this, as Mr. M. observes, is the land proprietors have every year endeavoured to increase to a certain amount that part of the annual produce which is destined for the business of reproduction, whereby they would have increased the annual produce, and the permanent riches of the country; but government has every year, or at least at every short interval of years, taken the property which the people would thus have employed in augmenting the riches of the country, and has devoted it to mere dead consumption, whence the increase of production has been prevented. It is in this manner, according to Mr. Spence, that the national debt has been advantageous !” We shall have occasion probably, in the next number, to consider the nature of this "stimulus," somewhat more at Jarge. The following sentences express the general doctrine of the work. The two main springs of national wealth and prosperity, are the cultivation of the land, and manufactures for home employment and consumption. Foreign commerce is a mere auxiliary to these two: and its sole utility consists in enabling the nation to obtain its supply to certain demands, at a less expence of land and labour than it could have supplied them at home." There is an ambiguity or incompleteness in the last clause; we are indebted to foreign commerce not only for supplying certain demands cheaper, but for supplying certain other demands at all. Mr. M., we know, is speaking of the utility of commerce as increasing the quantity of commodities, not its convenience in varying the kinds; but to vary the kind is in fact to increase the quantity; if the country manufactures more hardware than it wants, it is enriched to the amount of that excess, as well by importing sugar which it could not raise at all, as by importing oats which it could not raise so cheap. The last chapter is highly interesting; it shows the provision which is made in the physical constitution of man, and in the capabilities of nature, for his progress in prosperity, which is only counteracted by his irregular passions, especially as they operate to involve him in the extravagance of |