The Sun.
London, England, 1835-05-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MEMOIRS OF LORD BOLINGBROKE.
Br GEORGE Wixo.norx Coosz, En.
2 K;Ils. Sm.—Richard Bentley, Burlington-street, I :33.; .

This is a very animated account of the life and cha-
racter of one of the greatest men of modern times. If
only considered as the bosom friend of Pope, and the
founder of that philosophy on
.which the celebrated
" Essay on Man" is constructed, Bolingbroke would
demand the labour of the biographer ;. but when to
this claim are added the conspicuous station he held in
the political affairs of William 111. and Queen Anne,
his character as a writer and orator, and the signal mis-
fortunes which threw a cloud over his latter days, one
can scarcely mention any personage in modern 'history
whose " life" may be more profitably studied than that
of Henry St. John. Mr. Cooke has, therefore, ren-
dered a permanent service to biography in general by
the pains he has taken in investigating the career of
this remarkable wit, philosopher, and statesman, and
by the light which his researches have thrown on many
disputed points in Bolingbroke's actions and motives.
His connexion with the Earl of Oxford, and the ani-
mosity which arose between him and that minister, are
I fully developed, and a most amusing representation is
given of the Coutt intrigues, by whose agency those
notorious female rivals, the old Duchess of Marlbo-
rough, and the upstart Mrs. Masham, contrived to
fool Queen Anne. , St. John's conduct as Secretary
at War, and his subsequent tactics in opposition, his
manoeuvres against Harley, his tampering with the
cause of the Pretender, his final disgrace and banish-
ment, and his behaviour during his expulsion from
his native country, are all revealed with a masterly
hand, and enable the reader to understand clearly the
real character of that man who, more than any other,
has furnished a subject for perpetual controversy. Dis-
gusted with fis treatment at home, Bolingbroke, on
his arrival on the Continent, accepted the office of Se-
cretary of State under the Pretender, and in this capa-
city was the bearer of a mission to the Court of Ver-
sailles ; but becoming at length worn out by the dis-
tracted state of the Chevalier's Councils, he retired from
his service, and, to,add to,his other misfortunes, , was
impeached by that ,Prince. These circumstances,
taken in conjunction with the private affairs of Boling-
broke's life, form a narrative more stirring and fuller of
variety than the generality of memoirs ; and we doubt
not that the reader's curiosity in tracing them will equal
that which animated us in the perusal of these
volumes. The critical portions of Mr. Cooke's
work will interest the thpughtful inquirer no less than
those occupied by narrative. He passes in review,
not only Bolingbroke's,, character as a politician and
moral philosopher, but examines his writings,, and ex-
poses with an unsparing hand the fallacy ,of his theolo-
gical disquisitions.'. -

PHILANTHROPIC' ECONOMY, or the, PHILO-

SOPHY 01 ...HAPPINESS,
Practically, applied to the Social,..PoPical, and Commercial
relations V. Great Britain.
BY MRS. LbUDON.
London: Churton, Holies Street. 1835.

Mrs. Loudon is an amiable as well as a most intelli-
gent woman. Her'book breathes throughout a spirit
of goOd-Will to every hunia.ii being, which is as differ-
ent from the common cant of the political and social
optimists of the day as light is from, darkness.- She
possesses in an eminent degree the faculties of a close
reasoner, and easily anticipates the strongest objections
with which her arguments can be opposed. Her
work is an invaluable production, because• it completely
reconciles the leading doctrines of the' science of poli-
tical economy with those sacred precepts inculcated by
the Divine Founder of the Christian religion. This
is the first great object of her book, and admirably has
she attained it. So far the work is not only original,
but invaluable in its originality. It has hitherto
been the prevailing practice •- with all writers on
political science to regard the doctrines of the
Christian faith as an abstract code, which it was nei-
ther convenient nor necessary to allude to, in arguing
the probable workings and consequences of certain
systeins of taxation, or certain restrictions on commerce.
Mrs. Loudon has departed from this mode of discussing,
political questions. She has undertaken to show that
all restrictive systems are not only morally evil, and in
their results injurious to the welfare of society, but
that they are directly at variance with the precepts
contained in the written law, of God. To us her rea-
soning appears quite conclusive ; and many of her ar-
guments in defence of Free Trade as stronger than any
to be met with in the works of Adam Smith, M'Cul-
loch, Miss Martineau, Professor Dew, or any of the
writers in the Westminster Review. One of the chief
recommendations of Mrs. Loudon's work is the total
absence of the unintelligible phrases .so common in all
other treatises on political economy, and the simple
form in- which every pact of the system is placed before
the public mind. The jargon of the science is thrown
aside; the first principles fully explained; the importance
of the study briefly stated ; the objections to it fully and
ably answered ; so that before a dozen pages are carefully
gone through, the uninitiated reader is surprised •to
find that political science is less difficult of compre-
hension than a resson in music, or a chapter in his-
tory. Mrs. Loudon does not shrink from freely ex-
pressing her opinions on all the great questions which
now agitate the country. She advocates the abolition
of all. monopolies ; repudiates the system of indirect
taxation ; condemns the law of primogeniture and •
hereditary legislation ; considers the policy of poor
laws for Ireland ; and devotes a chapter to a subject
hardly ever touched upon—the awful responsibility of
voting in. Parliament: The work contains many fine
passages which might be offered as extracts ; but we
give the following from- her chapter on the collateral
benefits of a Property Tax, because it treats of an
important subject, which will, in the course of a very
short time, force itself upon the attention of this
country :
" But lay the burdens of the state exclusively, or chiefly, on
already realized property—that is, make the tax-voting order
the tax-paying order—and the representatives cf property,
whether reformers or . non _reformers, would immediately feel,
and therefore understand, the necessity. of rendering those
burdens as light as circumstances would permit. Sinecures
and unnecessary offices' would be abolished, and the indispen-
able ones remunerated moderately ; or, if the property class
thought fit, instead of each dividing his own possessions among
his own children, to keep up, at tbe expense of the order,
establishments in which their younger sons might still be
placed to scramble for the prizes, it would become a sort of
club affair, and, whether wise or not, would at least cease to
be unjust to other classes. Another most essential advantage
attendant upon laying the burdens of the state exclusively on
already realized property, calling in always the aid of new
property as fast as realized, is, that such an arrangement
would not only teach the represeptatives of already realized
property, now the law-making order, economy, but also, which
is of infinitely more importance; give them an immediate per-
sonal interest in the increase of national wealth, and therefore
set them upon devices to bring about and secure general pros-
perity. Industry—that is to say, the immediate interest of
industry—would thus,
,at length, be virtually represented : a
privilege it has never yet possessed, and which no reform in
the freedom of election, not even universal suffrage and vote by
ballot, could bestow upon it. For the man wh has his daily
bread to earn bas seldom education, never leisure, still less a
legal qualification to take himself a seat in Parliament, and so
become the actual representative of industry; and it is in vain
that by his vote, however fairly given, he sends thither a dele-
gate who has made his fortune in the same occupation at which
lie is himself still a labourer ; by the very fact of having ac-
quired a fortune that delegate has ceased to be the representa-
tive of industry, and become in fact, and, what is still more
important in feeling, the representative of property ; it has
become his supposed personal interest to devise laws for the
more than just protection of already realized property gene-
rally, and special enactments securing to the property portion,
or great capitalist of his own peculiar trade or calling, some
,Unfair monopoly, calculated to oppress at once the public and
the operative.; and such, therefore, has been in general the
conduct pursued by what is called the great mercantile interest

in the HouSe—men who, though risen from the people, are no
banger of the people. ,In fact, our boasted three estates have
long had absolutely no existerce. Whether the maintenance
of such a fancied harmony, arising out of discord, is either
desirable or possible, is another question. Again, the real
identity of interest of the whole community is a truth which is
little understood, and less acted upon. What we have at pre-
sent to deal with, therefore, is the supposed separate interests
of the various parties in the state; and these consist, in name
only, of King, Lords, and Commons,--in reality, of King;
Property, and Industry. Lords and Commons thus, instead
of being two such supposed interests or estates, are united, by
the possession of property, into one such supposed interest or
estate ; and industry, while ground into the very dust to pay
whatever this united interest chooses to demand, is shut out
from all particle of share in the virtual representation. And
yet the national importance of already realized property, com
pared with industry, or the power of creating wealth, is but as
that of the income of an estate for a short period compared
with that of the value of the estate itself. What rents would
lands pay without labour ? What interest would money yield
unless the principal were employed to set labour in motion ?
Now there is no question that what both Houees of Parlia-
ment vote, constitutes law; yet already realized property, this"
comparatively unimportant interest, is represented in both
Houses : industry; or the power of creating wealth, that stu-
pendously important interest, not in either. Thus the great
stability giving majority of the nation, whose property consists
in this power of creating wealth by labour, though they send
nominal reprosentatives to Parliament, have no one, with an
interest felt to be identical with their own, to plead their cause
in any constitutianal form, except indeed the drawing up of
humble petitions for that which they have a right to demand.
If, therefore, neglecting the prayers of those petitions, the
property-holding, corn-growing union,—being also the law-
framing, place-holding, subsidy-voting, and subsidy-appropri-
ating union—choose to make industry or labour, which it is
their supposed interest to buy cheap, unprofitable, and bread,
or the produce of the soil, which it is their supposed interest
to sell dear, unpurchasable, and yet to take (for so doing)
large salaries levied on industry,—what has industry left ?
The terrible remedy of turning the ploughshare into the
sword 111"

We trust that this work will find its way into the
hands of all classes. Rich and poor will act wisely in
studying it. It can give offence to none, and may
benefit all.

FROM LAST NIGHT'S GAZETTE.

At the Court at St., James's, the 27th day of May, 1835,

PRP:SENT,
The King's Most Excellent Majesty in Council.
This day the Right lion. Sir Richard Hussey Vivian, Bart. and
the Right Hon. George S. Byng were, by his Majesty's command,
sworn of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and took
their respective places at the Board accordingly.

BOARD OF GREEN CLOTH, MAY 6.
The King has been pleased to appoint the Honourable George
Stevens Byng, Comptroller of his Majesty's Household, vice the
Right Honourable Heory Lowry Corry, resigned.

WHITEHALL;;MAY 23.

The Lords Commissioners for the custody of the Great Seal have
anpoirited Michael Cohen D'Lara, of Sheffield, in the county of
\'ork, Gent., to be a Master Extraordinary in the High Court of
Chancery.
The Lords Commissioners for the custody of the Great Seal have
also appointed William Edwards, of Spalding, in the County of Lin-
coln, Gent., to be a Master Extraordinary in the High Court of
Chancery. .