"It is easy to show how much more dangerous it is for a bank to discount accommodation paper than real paper. Suppose it has discounted B's accommodation acceptance to A, then B, on the face of the instrument, is the principal debtor to the bank, which will of course make B pay; but as it is A's duty to provide the funds to enable B to pay, if he fails to do so, B has his immediate remedy over against A. So that if the bank presses B, he will immediately press A, just as every other surety is entitled to recover from his principal. But if A be not in a condition to pay up immediately, and has other bills current in the bank, the latter dare not press B, for fear of ruining A, and inducing a greater catastrophe. Now if A gets ten of his friends to accommodate him with their names, and discounts these bills at his banker's, it is A's duty to provide funds to meet every one of these bills at maturity. If the bills were real, it would be the duty of the ten acceptors to provide funds to meet them, and the bank would have ten real principal debtors, nor would the bank hesitate to press any one of them who failed in his engagement. As all these accommodation acceptors were most probably induced to lend their names to A on his promise to provide funds to protect them, they in all probability took no pains to provide any funds to meet them, as few persons would put their names on an accommodation bill if they really thought they would have to pay it, and they are most probably ignorant of each other's transactions. In the case

of real bills, then, the bank would have ten persons who would each take care to be in a position to meet his own engagement; in the case of accommodation paper, there is only one person to meet the engagements of ten. Furthermore, if one of ten real acceptors fails in his engagement, the bank can safely press the drawer; but if the drawer of the accommodation bills fails to meet any one of the ten acceptances, and the bank suddenly discovers that it is an accommodation bill, and they are under large advances to the drawer, they dare not for their own safety press the acceptor, because he will of course have immediate recourse against his debtor, and the whole fabric will probably tumble down like a house of cards.”

The style is very clear. On the other hand, there are some crotchets, an idea that "credit is capital," a great deal too much elaboration in the simple explanation, and a great deal too great length in the book altogether.

A great contrast in style and conciseness are Mr. Rickard's "Two Lectures on the Funding System." * These comprise an excellent summary of the most important elements of the subject; and, as is the case with such explanation when really excellent, suggest much that is very valuable on matters more abstruse and complicated. Mr. Rickards was a good deal induced, he tells us, to publish these lectures by the work of Mr. Newmarch, to which we devoted some space in our last number. We are happy to be able to cite Mr. Rickards as an authority in favour of the conclusion at which we then arrived, viz. that the older view of Mr. Pitt's loans was the sounder view, and that Mr. Newmarch has failed to show that the nation has obtained any real equivalent for the obvious and enormous augmentation of burden which she has entailed upon her

"Two Lectures on the Funding System, and on the different Modes of raising Supplies in Time of War, delivered before the University of Oxford, in Trinity Term, 1855." By George K. Rickards, M.A., Professor of Political Economy.

self. The public mind will doubtless continue to believe that it is a spendthrift policy to borrow £50 on condition of repaying £100. Nor will the refined calculations of numerous actuaries make any real impression on that idea. On most points we are happy to coincide with Mr. Rickards. We are not, however, disposed to agree with him in his adoption of Dr. Chalmers's theory of war prices." That eminent economist believed that one effect of loans to the government was a rise of general prices throughout the country. He explains his view in a passage quoted by Mr. Rickards:

"The sum borrowed by Government is withdrawn from commerce and manufactures, and must, to the extent of its power in producing commodities and bringing them to market, lessen the supply of those commodities.

"Should Government borrow £20,000,000 for the exigencies of the current year, there are, in that year, £20,000,000 worth less of commodities brought to the general market than there would otherwise have been. But there is nothing in this transaction between Government and so many of the capitalists of the nation, that can affect either the power or the inclination of buyers to purchase. There is as effective a demand as before, but a diminished supply: the same expenditure on the part of customers, but, on the whole, £20,000,000 worth less of enjoyment in return for it."

Mr. Rickards allows that in a progressive country, in which loans may be supposed to be taken from the annual savings and accumulations of the nation, this remark would not apply. It may be doubted, indeed, if it ever has any truth. If government contract a loan, and thereby withdraw £20,000,000 from the existing capital, this would mean that Rothschild would lend them that sum; that other lesser houses in London would lend it to Rothschild; that people in the country would lend it to the lesser London houses; that the loanable capital-the money-market, both in town and countrywould be unequal to the demands which it had formerly satisfied. Banks and money-lenders must lend £20,000,000 less, and the people who would have borrowed that £20,000,000 must buy £20,000,000 less. It is obvious that persons who borrow, do so with the view of purchasing something. Take the case of a brewer: if he borrow £1000, it is because he wants more malt, more drayhorses, more waggons; if, from any circumstance, he ceases to be able to borrow it, the effect is a diminished demand for waggons and dray-horses. The error of Dr. Chalmers arose from his forgetting that a trading capitalist is, ex vi termini, a continual purchaser. Dr. Chalmers, it is plain, regarded him as a mere seller, without taking into account the mode in which he obtained the articles which he sold; and we are surprised at so acute and sound a writer as Mr. Rickards repeating such a mistake.

The crop of currency pamphlets which precedes the periodical renewal of the Bank charter seems beginning. We have one entitled, "The Errors and Evils of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, as divulged by Lord Overstone (late Samuel Jones Loyd, Esq.), in his Lordship's Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of

Parliament, appointed to inquire into the Causes of the Commercial Distress in the year 1847. By Lieut.-Col. J. H. Macdonald."* The writer is wroth "because ignorant men have made a law, declaring that bank notes shall be convertible into a fixed quantity of gold, in defiance of, &c. &c."

Mr. Leone Levi has written an odd book, under the imposing title of "The Law of Nature and Nations as affected by Divine Law." He has given us substantially a Peace tract. He says: "The question of the illegality of capital punishment and war, are indissolubly connected. If Divine law sanctions our killing a person who commits or attempts to commit murder at home, it will necessarily follow, that we may kill a foreigner, or many such, who make or attempt to make an aggression upon our country." He seems, if we understand him, to believe that the right of one man to kill another in self-defence existed in the so-called state of nature, but ceased on the institution of civil society. His great idea, however, is the application to this subject of the "divine law." A writer who can consider the Bible-New Testament as well as Oldto be opposed to war and capital punishments, is not one with whom it is wise to commence a discussion.

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A good many pamphlets crowd our table, which, however, only fall within the scope of this summary, when they either state or elucidate some truth of abstract theory. The National Debt no Debt at all," is a pleasing title suggestive of the sponge. After reading it, we are at a loss to know if this was the writer's meaning. He explains that the "national debt" is only a perpetual annuity, and then digresses on the folly of giving "pensions," i. e., annuity, to wicked persons who have aided governments to carry on wicked wars. The discussion between Mr. Howe and Mr. Hincks, on the right of colonists to posts in other parts of the empire, and in the mother-country, derives an interest from the appointment of the latter, a Canadian, to the governorship of a West India Island.

* Richardson, Brothers.

† Cash.

"Speech of the Hon. Joseph Howe on the Union of the North American Provinces, and on the Right of the British Colonists to Representation in the Imperial Parliament, and to Participation in the Public Employments and Distinctions of the Empire." Effingham Wilson.

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Reply to the above, by the Hon. Francis Hincks, Member of the Legislative Assembly of Canada." Ridgway.

SOCIETIES.

Phoenicia. By John Kenrick, M.A. 1 vol. Fellowes.

Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover. By Dr. Doran. 2 vols. Bentley.

Maud. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. Moxon. [Reviewed in Article VI.]

Lyra Germanica.

Hymns translated from the German. By Catherine Winkworth. 1 vol. Longman.

[This is a faithful, harmonious, and delicate translation of fine, sometimes very fine, German hymns.]

The Works of Professor Wilson. Vol I. Being the first volume of Noctes Ambrosianæ. Blackwood.

[Lavish in imagination, and sometimes in power. The less gentle personalities should not have been republished.]

The Newcomes. By W. M. Thackeray.

A Lost Love. By Ashford Owen. 1 vol. Smith and Elder.
[Reviewed in Article IV.]

The Old Court Suburb. By Leigh Hunt. Hurst and Blackett.
Street's Brick and Marble Architecture. Murray.

The Phasis of Matter. Being an outline of the discoveries and applications of Modern Chemistry. By T. Lindley Kemp, M.D. 2 vols., with woodcuts. Longman.

Curran's Sketches of the Irish Bar. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett. The War in the East, from the year 1853 till July 1855. By General George Klapka. Chapman and Hall.

Memoirs of Lieut. Bellot. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

A Campaign with the Turks in Asia. By Charles Duncan, Esq. 2 vols. Smith and Elder.

[A very lively as well as very interesting narrative.]

The Wabash; or, Adventures of an English Family in the interior of America. By J. R. Beste, Esq. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

Burton's Pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca.

Longman.

Seymour's Russia and the Sea of Azof. 1 vol.

Vols. I. and II.

Murray.

A Londoner's Walk to the Land's End. 1 vol. Chapman and Hall. Russell's Letters on the War. 1 vol.

1 vol. Routledge.