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

HE 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. L) ; Russian Government and Society—
(a careful review of " Revelations of Russia") ; I'he
Real Union. of England and Ireland ; French Philoso-
phy (Jouffroy' " 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-e
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 hss
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 1688, that
financial exigencies became prominent in the regulation of the
political movements of civilized nations."
As to the facility of acquirement, the Reviewer remarks:
" 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, unpuzzled 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 labour
which is required to enable us to obtain tf. By this surely
simple process, we obtain a perfect perception of the bearings
of the gerieral 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 distinct 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 step 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
to see 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 barter, 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 cf 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. Ti
.egards Sir Robert Peel's " complement" Bill of lase
rear.

" hisnot our intention to disguise, however, our opinion o 1

this celebrated measure. It has been well described as a
scheme to prevent eb b.- 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 1644
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 a►one it originates, and with which
it fs 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
hich his administration has given birth."
W about 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 seep..

THE THEOLOGIAN. A Chronicle rf 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
stition, in which' he devoutly believed, than Elias Ash-
mole.
" Dr. Campbell in his Hermippus Redivivus, quotes a
singular book published under the title Melanges
d'Histoire et de Literature par M. de Vigneul Marville,'
Bonaventure d'Argonne was the real name of the author
who called himself Vigneul de Marville ; he was a
Chartreux religieux, and died about 1704. The follow-
ing tale is told, by way of exemplifying the notions above
named:—' The day after our arrival in London, several
tradesmen came tb our lodgings, in order to sell us the
commodities and curiosities of their country. Every one
of the company fixed readily his attention on what
pleased him most; some brought gloves, others ribbons,
and others silk gloves. The merchandise which fell to
my share was several perspective glasses and microscopes;
he who sold them was an excellent mathematician, a man
of great capacity, and could speak French tolerably well.
and as he was mighty well pleased
I kept him to dinner,
with the entertainment, he told me, after he rose from
the table, that he had a great curiosity to show me. He
then took out of a shagreen box an instrument in a tor-
toiseshell case, which proved to be a most excellent mi-
this epithet upon it, since
it mi-
croscope.
wassco psen. I may well bestow
excellent as not only to discover an infinity of
c
bodies imperceptible to the naked eye, but even the atoms
of Epicurus, the subtle matter of Descartes, the vapours
of thep s,
iceuarreth, those which flow from our own bodies, and
such as bring down to us here the influence of the stars.
The first experiment I made was looking.on the person
from whom I received it, at the distance of four or five
an opportunity of discerning an
infinitePacpaces,
which
number git'e me
o'f little worms, that were feeding most
voraciously upon his clothes; by which I perceived that,
contrary to the common opinion, it is not we who wear
out our clothes, but they are fairly eaten, off our backs
by these invisible insects. I changed my situation, and
considered my mathematician in another light. He ap-
reared t 6 be enveloped in a dark cloud. He told me,
that this appearance was owing to his perspiring strongly
after dinner ; and that this ought to convince me of the
truth of what Sanctorius had delivered in respect to the
proportion between this and other secretions. We next,
went into the kitchen, where there was a large piece of
beef roasting fur the servants, and I had the pleasure of
seeing with the same microscope, how the fire separates
all the parts of the wood upon which it acts, and darts
them by the violence of its motion against the beef that
turns before it, wounding it as it were, with an infinite
number of shafts, and so tearing it to pieces, some of
which are converted into juice, and others into a delicate
kind of smoke or vapour, which filled the kirchen, and
was very sensibly distinguished by our nostrils. Going
out of the house; we saw four young men playing at
ball. lat first sight felt a strong inclinationin favour of
one, and as strong an aversion against another, whence I•