The Sun.
London, England, 1845-08-07 00:00:00

THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

Of this review it is satisfactory to us to report a
steady and progressive improvement. Of the ten papers
in the present number most may safely challenge com-
parison with their more veteran contemporaries in the
blue and buff and the olive green liveries. The Currency
Question ; Tennyson's Poems, and School of Poetry ;
Ecclesiastical History—(a paper occasioned by the ap-
pearance of the late Dr. Wild's "Elements of Church
History," Vol. I.) ; Russian Government and Society—
(a careful review of " Revelations of Russia") ; The
Real Union of England and Ireland ; French Philoso-
phy (Jouffroy's " Nouveaux Mélanges Philosophiques") ;
Popular Education (Dr. Hamilton's Prize Essay).;
D'lsraeli's " Sybil ;" The Bampton Lectures ; and
Brougham's '• Lives of Men of Letters," &c.—all these
offer an abundant field for extract. But our limits being
very contracted, we can notice only, for the purpose of
quotation, the paper on Mr. Cargill's Currency Question,
and on Mr. Taylor's admirable "Essay on Money" and
"Catechism of the Currency." We would entreat our
readers to be induced, by the Reviewer's sensible
remarks on the absurd prejudice which exists against
the more general study of " Currency," to betake them-
selves without loss of time to the acquisition of some
preliminary or elementary acquaintance (most easily ac-
quired) of this, the most august and tremendous question,
we hesitate not to affirm, of the day, and of which the
terrible development that must be brought about by a
blind acquiescence much longer continued, in the signal
errors of the Premier's monetary legislation, will more
fatally convulse this country than any calamity she has
experienced since the exhaustion consequent on the
civil wars, or the closing of the Exchequer in 1673. We
commend, therefore, without further comment, the fol-
lowing passages to public attention:—
" The question of currency is, in fact, mixed, more or less
intimately, with some of the bearings of almost every political
question of great importance which can come before us.
There is hardly one upon which it does not either proximately
or remotely bear. Whether it be a question of taxation, or of
commerce, or of agricultural position, or of peace or war, or of
the laws respecting corn and other provisions, or of tithes, or
fixed payments of any kind, national or individual, this übiqui-
tous question of currency has relation to them all. No man,
whatever may be his intellectual resources and acquirements in
other respects, can really understand the history of his country
for the last century and a half, who is unacquainted with this
question. We say, the last century and a half, because it was
not until about the period of the Revolution of 1658, that
financial exigencies became prominent in the regulation of the
political movementslif civilized nations."
As to the facility of acquirement, the Reviewer remarks:
1' It seems to follow that this portion at all events, of the
much controverted science of political economy' is a portion
which may be certainly known, which may be termed an
' exact' science, and which he who understands, comprehends
in its integrity fully, uopuzzled by any infusion of error, un-
clouded by any sophistry, undistracted by any specious fallacy ;
and this truth we now propose, as the first step in this inquiry,
to impress upon the reader."
As to "value" and "money," these are his definitions:—
" We find from this, that the value of a thing in exchange
depends upon its plentity or scarcity, upon the ease or difficulty
of getting it ; or, in other words, upon the quantity of laliour
which is required to enable us to obtain it. By this surely
simple process, we obtain a perfect perception of the bearings
of the general term value ;' and by an easy inference, we
see, at the same time, that as various things are owing to the
dispensations of Providence, sometimes more plentiful than at
other times, the exchangeable value of these things is subject
to constant variation ; and that exchangeable value' is not
only an idea quite distiact from that of positive value, but liable
to constant changes as to its application to particular things, of
constant use amongst men. Here is another very plain but
very simple ste,p in this question. A child may comprehend
it ; and yet children of a larger growth' suffer themselves to
be confused or puzzled by it, merely from neglecting thus to
begin at the beginning. We have now arrived, naturally and
easily, at the question of money' and its use. It is surely
nothing more than a self-evident thing, that, having once come
tosee this tendency to constant variation and flux in the ex-
changeable values of commodities in use by society, we cannot
avoid also perceiving that these constant variations must cause
great inconvenience in the barter or exchange of these commo-
dities. There cannot be, in such a state of bartet, any means
of quickly and certainly knowing what the value, at the mo-
ment, of any commodity was or is compared with the rest. No
man could know, easily, how much wheat to give for so much
barley, or how much wine for so much oil ; and hence the de-
sire amongst men to have at hand, at all times, some means of
measuring, and, at the same time, expressing the actual ex •
changeable value, at the moment, of any commodity and of all
commodities. This means is ' money ;' and our next step is to
inquire how mankind came to fix upon gold and silver as the
best substances of which to coin money—that money, being to
be used as a standard measure of the value in exchange of all
other commodities."

We can only afford room for one more extract.
regards Sir Robert Peel's "complement" Bill of lase
year :

" It is not our intention to disguise, however, our opinion of
this celebrated measure. It has been well described as a
scheme to prevent ebb-tides, by keeping the country always at low
water.' That the intention is such as is here quaintly sha-
dowed forth is not denied by its author. That it will effect
even this portion of the advantage he expects to derive from it,
we must take leave to doubt. The Act of 1819 was a mistake
—not in its principle, but in its application. The Act of 1844
is not a mistake; but it is worse than that—it is a crotchet,'
totally inconsistent with other portions of the policy of the very
man in whose prepossessions alone it originates, and with which
it is made to limp forward hand in hand. It is impotent to
secure, under given circumstances, the ends put forward by its
projector as the motives for its enactment. It is at open war
with every other enactment of a fiscal or commercial nature to
which his administration has given birth."
Without committing ourselves by any means to all
the opinions contained in this powerful paper, we really
look upon it as one of the most able summaries of the
"Currency Question" that we have ever yet seen.

THE THEOLOGIAN. A Chronicle of Ancient and
Modern Divinity, No. VII.
The papers in this Number—" Objective Moral-
ity," " Magic," " Present Spiritual Temptations,"
" Hieroglyphics," " The Ideal of the Reformation,"
" Rabbinism "—these form a garland surely of ample
variety for extract. They are, however, for the most
part, ably written, and full of interest. Yet we find
it difficult to convey an adequate notion of one of
them by the condensed abridgment of which, alone,
our limits would allow—but we " bring up," at once,
at a very curious note on the article " Magic," from
which we transfer the following whimsical portion,
out of respect for the very zealous and learned, but
credulous Ashmole.
" These very words occur in the notes to a body of
treatises professing to explain all these mysteries: it
would be difficult to find an instance of a man exhibit-
ing more acuteness in bolstering up a system of super
'.titian, in which he devoutly believed, than Elias Ash-
mole.