The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-21 00:00:00

REPRINTS.

Among the many series of cheap novels which
have recently appeared, perhaps the best, without
exception, is that issued by Messrs. Chapman .and
Hall. It consists of a selection from original works
published by them, and, as many of our best
novels have been issued by their establishment, the
reader is sure of meeting with good and powerful
writing, as well as with a moral tone of right feel-
ing, quite incompatible with the exaggerated sen-
timent and excitement too often met with in the
foreign school of romance. The authors of "Mary
Barton," " The Head of the Family," " The
Bachelor of the Albany," as well as Miss Jews-
bury, Mrs. S. C. Hall, and Nathaniel Hawthorne,
have already contributed to this series, whose
latest publication is the reprint of a tale by one,
who, whatever may be the conflicting opinions as to
his merits, must certainly be admitted to be one of
our most talented and original writers. The work

77: alluciti to " (.).ti Loe rCT.aI.
Kingsley. We must not forget to enumerate,
among the merits of this series, that of ;being in
good and clear type. Next to this edition we may
perhaps mention the " Parlour Library," which
possesses just now a great attraction, as it is issuing
the works of Mrs. Marsh and of the author of
"Margaret Maitland." The great advantage of
the syste.n of reprints is, to put good works of fic-
tion into the hands of those who would be unable
to give a high price, without depriving the authors
of their due remuneration. This good is often
counterbalanced, it is true, by the publication of
inferior works, but in the present instance it is not
so. " Angela," and " Norman's Bridge" appeared
some time since ; they are now followed by one of
the most interesting of her books—." Mount Sorel."
Though it cannot be ranked so high as her chef
d'ceuvre, Emilia Wyndham," it is one of the best
of her others. " Delaware," by that most inde-
fatigable of writers, G. P. R. James, has also re-
cently come out in the " Parlour Library," and
" Brambletye House," by Horace Smith, is cer-
tainly A bargain at eighteenpence. A new series,
entitled " The Amusing Library," has just com-
menced, published by Lambert and Co. It intends
to furnish its readers with selections from the best
fictions of other lands. Though we confess to pre-
ferring English novels for diffusion among those
whose library is necessarily limited, yet if carefully
selected, as it promises to be, it may certainly
possess the merit of conveying information as to
the history, manners, and customs of foreign na-
tions. The type and paper are excellent and
the binding is very pretty, if not very durable.
The works of Hendrik Conscience have formed the
first number of this series, and they have been fol-
lowed by " Romantic Tales of the Netherlands"
and " Sea Stories ; or, Tales of Adventure, Peril,
and Escape." We must add that the latter are
authentic, not imaginary, and that iu some in-
stances the words of the original narrators are
preserved.

WHAT IS A POUND ?- WHAT IS A
WILLI) ?

(From the Derbyshire Courier.)

Lord John Russell has recently been usefully and
honourably employed in attending a ragged school
meeting at Gloucester. His lordship has long been the
strenuous and indefatigable advocate of the education of
the children of the poor, and the speech which he ad-
dressed to his audience at this meeting is well deserving
of attentive perusal and of honourable mention by all
who recognise the paramount importance of this great
national question.
The Times writes an article on the occasion, and in
imitation of the question once asked by Sir Robert Peel
What is a Pound ? proposes another question—What is
a Child?
The writer's object appears to be very much that of
Peel when he asked his question, viz., to excite atten-
tion. A child can ask a question which ten wise men
may be puzzled to answer. So the writer, like a prudent
man, does not attempt to answer his ewn question, but
facetiously suggests the various ways in which various
philosophical investigators would define a child. Till the
Times, therefore, tells us what a child really is, we intend
to rest content with the very simple, and at the same
time comprehensive, definition of the learned Mr.
Cranium, whose acquaintance we bad the pleaqure"of
making some years ago at Headling Hall. A child, our
philosophical friend assures us, is a Osteosarchmfmatos-
plceuchnochondroneuromuelous compages, or shell, which
at once envelopes and developes that mysterious and in-
estimable kernel—the desiderative, determinative, ratio-
cinative, imaginative, inquisitive, appetitive, compara-
tive, reminiscent, congeries of ideas and notions, simple
and compound, comprised in the comprehensive deno-
mination of the mind."

The answer which that great philosopher, Sir Robert
Peel, gave to his own question was to toss a sovereign
into the air, and announce to his expectant auditors
"This is a pound." The Times writer, following this
excellent example, tosses up his "little human fourpenny
bit," and then proceeds, like a practical man, to give
good advice as to the way of making the best of it. it
would have been a happy thing for the country if Sir
Robert had done the same.
The captain of a man•of-war can always tell you
exactly what o'clock it is—for he can "make it" what
time he pleases; Peel could tell us any time within the
last 30 years exactly what a pound is—for his bill of
1819 made it what he chose, viz., 123 grains of gold.
But what was a pound in former days I Servius Tullius
first coined money at Rome, and then the Roman As, or
pound, contained a Roman pound of good copper. The
English pound in the time of Edward I. contained a
pound of silver of a known fineness. In 1352, our gold
pound, representing 20 shillings, contained 360 grains of
fine gold, worth 3/. 45. in our present money. In 1466
it contained only 240 grains. In 1552 it contained 174
grains. In 1650, 140 grains. In 1750, 129 grains, of
gold passed for 1/, is. Do the Bullionists imagine that
Peel's Bill has defined a pound, as 123 grains of gold, to
the world's end ?

The limes rightly concludes that the management and
training of a child is more important than his philoso
phical definition. We think it more important that a
statesman should make a people prosperous and happy
than that he should speculate upon standards of value.
We have paid a tolerably high price for that piece of
flippant ignorance of Sir R. Peel, when he told us that a
sovereign could mean nothing but 123 grains of gold.
The pressure of our national debt has been doubled. It
might have been paid off by this time ; it remains be-
tween 700 and 800 millions. What has been the ruin
to thousands of merchants and traders and their families ;
how many estates have passed away from their heredi-
tary possessors into the hands of usurers; how bany
hundreds of thousands, yes millions, of honest, inols.
trious, toil-worn Englishmen of the working classes hat,'
passed from comfort into privation, from privation into
distress, from distress into misery, crime, or the grave,
in direct consequence of the operation of Peel's mone-
tary system.

Let us, however, take the pound as we End it-123
grains of gold. Vhat is now best to be done? We
answer at once that the best thing to be done is to allow
the gold pound to find its market price in national paper
money. The pound has fluctuated from 360 grains in
1352 to 123 grains in 1856. Let it fluctuate from year
to year instead of from century to century. One of the
commonest mistakes which persons make about the
currency is to fancy that by fixing the paper pound at
123 grains of gold they somehow or other secure some
advantage. Is it so? Of what possible advantage can
it be that five times 123 grains of gold may always (ex-
cept when it is wanted in time of panic or depression) be
obtained for a Si. note ? The Times has answered that
question. " The worst of it is," said the Times not long
since, " that you can only get half as much of anything
for a sovereign (not a paper representative of a sovereign
observe) now as you did a short time since."
It is not the 123 grains of gold that is important to
one ; it is the purchasing power that is the important
thing.

Peel had no doubt some vague idea that by fixing the
quantity of gold which a paper pound should always re-
present, he gave greater fixity to the purchasing power of
the pound. Such has not been the case. There have been
greater fluctuations in the value of money, looking either
at its purchasing power, or at the interest paid for its
use, since the passing of Peel's bill of 1819, than ever
occurred before in a similar period of time. It is evi-
dent that if you wish to have a real standard of value
to which the relative value of all other things may be
referred, the purchasing power of that which you make
the standard must be invariable. There is, there can
be, no such thing in the world.
Yet in search of this philosopher's stone, England has
been half ruined.
We know also an approximation to a standard of
value. If we take -wheat, barley, and oats the
three principal descriptions of grain—and add other
artic!es of general consumption, such as beef, mutton,
and pork, the average price of these articles, for a series
of years, would form for an endowment the best standard
of value at which we could arrive—and that, after all,
is but an approximation.
But with regard to the question itself, " What is a
Pound? "we ask with Bishop Berkeley, " whether the
true idea of money is not altogether that of a ticket or
counter ?" And believing it to be so we reply that a
P.ourd, as it ought to be in England in 1856, is 123
grains of gold, and as much more or less as the fluctua -
tion of the market may make it.

chef
best
inde-
o re-.