view, the praise our author bestows upon it. And we would respectfully urge this conclusion upon him in order that his authority may not be used to the furtherance of a system of utilitarianism, which we are sure he holds not. As a theoretic question, there are difficulties, doubtless, on both sides. If we take the enlarged view of the science, then nothing that bears on the well-being of society, it may be said, is foreign to it, and every art, science and profession, intellectual, moral and religious, must enter into it as an element and be included in its universal directory. This is unqestionably a great difficulty. But if on the contrary we confine it to questions of material wealth, we fall again into new and worse, certainly at least, more dangerous entanglements; we attempt to divide what nature has not divided-the physical and the moral man, and to separate what God has inseparably united-the elements of happiness and duty, of human enjoyment as it springs from our compound being, the result of which attempted separation necessarily is, that every practical question thus treated in Political Economy, becomes either insoluble or false, through our refusal to admit into calculation all the actual data of the case. Education, for instance, is then to be valued only for its bearing on wealthno account is to be made of its influence upon character or happiness. Scientific teaching thus becomes every thing-moral and religious, nothing; or, in other words, the superstructure of society is to be built up, while its foundations may lie in ruins. Away, say we, with such baseless Philosophy! It is a system which the wise and good have ever seen to be false, though it has been left to modern experience practically to demonstrate that it is also fatal. We allude to the convict colonies of Great Britain, which have taught unto the communities of the world, at least one good lesson; and that is, the utter inability of material wealth alone to build up the social system, which falls into hopeless ruin unless religion be its corner-stone, and good morals the binding mortar to hold together its otherwise loose and rolling materials. But to look at another difficulty arising out of this narrow view of the objects of Political Economy. Trace it in its influence on the individual-accumulation being his only good, all unproductive expenditure is evil-it is but pulling down with one hand what he is engaged in building up with the other; and whether such disbursement be to noble ends or to personal enjoyment, it is to be alike condemned, as being alike fatal to its sole ruling principle. Under such a system-farewell to all that sweetens labor-to the song and the rustic

dance of the peasant-to the flower garden of the maidento all tranquilizing pursuits-to all, in short, whether in city or country, that makes either wealth valuable, or a life of toil endurable. Enjoyment as enjoyment, is to be proscribed. "Ye are idle, ye are idle" is the language of this Egyptian taskmaster; and a life of labor-unceasing labor; of parsimonyunrelenting parsimony, would be the destined and chosen lot of man-the perfection of his social state-the "summum bonum" of Political Economy. To this the answer of economists would doubtless be, that the uses of wealth, and the duties and enjoyments of life fall not within the sphere of their science, which has reference only to the means of accummulation. Now, this is the very point to which we wish openly to bring its teachers. If Political Economy be but a science of abstractions, it is well; we will not quarrel with its results; but then we will know how to estimate them. But if, on the contrary, it be held forth as a practical and ruling science, as it is, and ever will be popularly understood to be, and as our author expressly states it-then we beseech him to adapt it more clearly to the whole nature of man, lest it teach lessons which he himself would be the first to repugn, and which must in the end bring the science itself into suspicion, if not into contempt. Our views, we confess, lead us to give to the science its wider scope. We concur in the language of Burke. "True Economy" says he, "is a liberal principle-it is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection." It takes in, therefore, the whole nature of man, and looks to the prosperity of the community in all its elements.

Passing by this preliminary but still all important question, the work before us presents itself as an analysis of the fundamental laws of the science, together with an examination of militating opinions. Out of the twenty-one chapters of the volume, seven are devoted to review, and the conclusions of Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Say, Torrens, Wakefield, Chalmers, McCulloch, Scrope and Senior, are successively examined, and as we think, rather summarily set aside. With the last named writer, Nassau W. Senior, late Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, our author seems most unwilling to differ, as who would not, it having been the lot of few economists to substantiate their principles, and to perpetuate their fame by such a durable monument as he has erected in the new Poor Law system of England. It was in truth the cleansing of an Augean Stable, and required somewhat of the power as well as the perseverance of a

Hercules to effect it. The subjects treated are purely scientific ones, "Production," "Value," "Rent," "Revenue," "Capital," "Division of Labor," "Wages," "Profits,"-these constitute its leading heads, and whatever exception be taken to our author's conclusions, there certainly can be none as to the spirit in which they are sought. Candor and manly freedom characterize all his enquiries. Nor should the statistic details of the work be forgotten in the enumeration of its merits. They are numerous, valuable, and highly interesting, though we beg leave to differ from him most materially in his estimate of their value in the analytic part of the science. But this opens to us a larger question.

The form and method of a scientific work is a matter we deem of first importance, more especially in a science which has been to common apprehension so mystified as Political Economy; and on this point our author, we think, is not without his faults. Some indeed are mere matters of haste or inadvertency which may be easily amended in a subsequent edition — such as the deferring to his 294th page, the definition of technical terms which he there acknowledges he has been using all along in a new sense. The necessity of directing the seventeenth chapter to be read in connexion with the ninth, in order to connect subjects that have been needlessly separated, and the mixing up of reviews of authors' opinions with the abstract investigation of subjects. These we say admit of easy correction, but there is one error so interwoven with his very method, that we beg leave to direct his attention to the principle itself out of which it arises. We mean the length to which his work must necessarily extend itself: if Part First of Division the First extends, as the present does, to an octavo volume of 340 closely printed pages-to us, we confess, professional readers as we are, it offers a rather alarming calculation. Now, of its openness to this objection, our author seems not wholly unaware. "The portion of his work now submitted to the reader," in the language of his preface, "has extended itself much beyond the limits originally assigned to it in consequence of the necessity of examining the opposing views of other writers." But we beg leave to suggest to him, setting aside the question of such necessity, whether another cause does not exist that lies deeper. Mr. Carey looks upon the principles of economical science as deducible only from a wide examination of facts-"from the experience of the world" to use his own words, "for hundreds and thousands of years," (p. 142,) or as he lays down the principle in his Introduction, "the chart cannot be constructed without a careful examination of the log books of the

vessels that have been engaged in the trade." (p. xiii.) Now, on this point, we would suggest to our author, in his own figure, whether he do not think an accurate survey of the coast by the hand of science is to be preferred to all the log books of all the coasters; and if so, whether careful analysis in these matters is not more to be depended on than the accumulation of multitudinous facts which alike distract the mind by their variety and weaken the conclusiveness of all reasoning from them by disjointed repetition. "The universally true," which our author seeks in observation of facts, and which we think facts can never give, we would rather find in the analysis of motives, that is in the similarity of our common race, and the identity of our natural emotions. Nor in this would we be adopting any novel or doubtful course. All natural and moral science takes for granted the uniformity of nature, and predicates of all similar cases what it finds true upon an accurate analysis of one. The laws of motion for instance, of chemical combination, of mechanic power, are all based upon singular deduction, and their universality is a point assumed upon the strength of a general law already received, namely, that nature's operations are uniform, and that similar causes will ever produce similar results. Now, this is what we claim for the laws of Political Economy, and what we advise in the pursuit of them; to set out as does the Natural Philosopher, not by vague and general induction from innumerable cases, but by rigid analysis of few, and those of the simplest supposable kind; proceeding, as Bacon recommends, by "exclusions and rejections," until we have arrived at the naked principle in question, which once clearly established, its universality follows of course; it is a law of our sentient being, and may therefore be reasoned upon with confidence whensoever and wheresoever it is called into action. 'Tis true a difference holds between the universality of Physical and Moral lawsthe former admit not of deviations, the latter do. If the laws of motion were found false in a single instance, they would cease to be "laws;" but the bond of "self-interest" is still to be esteemed a principle of our nature, and may be safely argued from in all cases of masses of men, notwithstanding the many individual instances that rise above or sink below it: argued from, we mean here, in relation to economical science. Between our author and us, however, this question arises not, since he maintains the binding character of economical laws in language stronger even than we would care to use, as being "universally true and universally applicable." (p. xvi.) Between

us therefore the question is, not whether there be "laws," but how they are best arrived at. For this end he takes the history of the world, we would take that of an individual: he looks at the outward effects of labor, we would look at the inward causes; he finds the laws of exchangeable value in the statistics of the Custom House, we would seek for them rather in the rude barter of the Indian, or the bargaining of school boys in their short hour of relaxation. The perennial sources of a nation's industry are to be sought, we think, like those of its mighty streams not in the river, but in the fountains. We would look for them therefore, not in the busy and crowded mart of merchants, but in the quiet labors of the husbandman, or the little workshop of the artisan, or wherever else the rising youth first finds himself thrown on his own resources for support; for not only is the boy "Father of the man," but the man is the unit of which the nation and the world are made, which have therefore in all their complex results, arising from the labor of countless millions, no other springs at work than those that are moving within the individual breast, so soon as the law of self-interest is called into action, and self-exertion is allowed free scope. Therefore it is that we would seek these laws of economical science by analytic investigation, rather than historical research. The results, too, as arrived at by these two processes would manifest a corresponding difference, and afford, perhaps, a sufficient test of their relative merit. Laws attained by analysis will be as those of nature always are, few, precise and simple; those deduced from experience will be many and vague, indicating that the foundation has not been reached. Let us now try our author's conclusions by this test. The closing chapter of the volume contains these results, numerically arranged as "the laws of nature verified by the experience of all the world." (p. 341.) We will take the last but one, as illustrating at once their number and character:

"XXXVI. That with the further accumulation of capital, he (that is, man) brings into action soils still more inferior, and with every such change finds increased facility in obtaining the necessaries of life from a diminished surface; he is therefore enabled to draw nearer to his fellow men, and daily more and more to co-operate with them, by which co-operation his labor is rendered daily more productive. This increased facility of obtaining the means of subsistence causes a constant diminution in the proportion of the population required for the production of food, and enables a constantly increasing proportion to apply themselves to the production of clothing, shelter and the other comforts of life."p. 341.