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' mere mental labour is comparatively worthless;' (political economy has called it unproductive' and valueless in respect to national wealth;) that property or wealth ought not to be accu'mulated or transmitted; that to take interest on money lent or ' profit on capital employed, is unjust.

< These are notions', continues the American Professor, 'that tend strongly toward an equal division of property and the right of the poor to plunder the rich. The mistaken and ignorant people who entertain these fallacies as truths, will learn, when they have the opportunity of learning, that the institution of political society originated in the protection of property, and this has ever continued to be its main end and design; that equality to-day would be inequality tomorrow; that labour is, of itself, nearly useless, and can never be brought into action but by means of wealth or capital; that the rich are as necessary to the poor, as the poor are to the rich; and that there is no injustice in giving Raffael a little higher wages per day than his colour-grinder received, or a better recompense to Canova, than to the man who quarried the marble. James Watt and Robert Fulton were worth more to society, than five hundred thousand hedgers and ditchers. If the mechanics should seriously continue to press such silly notions, they will justly make enemies of those who would otherwise be their reasonable friends; and they are much mistaken if they suppose the wealthy will not find the means, as well as the inclination, to defend their property against the attacks of ignorance and injustice. All that a good government can do, is, to give to every man an equal chance of acquiring useful knowledge; to lighten as much as possible the burdens of taxation in favour of the poor; to grant no artificial privileges to the rich; and to throw no impediments in the way of industry or talent.' Cooper, pp. 333, 4.

Of the volume from which this extract is taken, we cannot now attempt any formal review. That would require, indeed, a series of elaborate articles; and the time is gone by, when a monthly journal could hope to detain the leisurely attention of habitual readers we fear that we have already trespassed upon the patience of ours. On some future occasion, we shall advert more specifically to some of the views and reasonings which it imbodies; and in the mean time, widely as we differ from Dr. Cooper in a few of his doctrines, we bear a willing testimony to the acuteness, independence of mind, and extensive knowledge both of books and things, of principles and facts, which the work exhibits. We have read it with much pleasure and interest, though, as we have intimated, not without a reserve of opinion on some points; and we strongly recommend a similar perusal of the volume to all who wish to arrive at clear and correct notions on the important subjects which it embraces. The work is professedly not intended for adepts in the study, but for novices. The style of treating the various topics, is therefore popular, sometimes a little desultory, with frequent and designed repetitions; and the vo

lume, if reprinted, would be susceptible of advantageous compression and abridgement. In its present shape, however, it is a highly valuable publication. Those who wish to pursue the subject, are recommended by the Writer to peruse Adam Smith, Say, Malthus, Ricardo, M'Culloch, and Mill. The list might have been extended a little further with propriety; yet, with the exception of the first, all their works may be regarded, perhaps, as the mere scaffolding of the science, of the greatest temporary utility, but preparatory only to the construction of a permanent system. If science begins where controversy ends, how small a proportion, as yet, does the science bear to the mass of discussion from which it has yet to be evolved!

It is a happy circumstance for this country, and may redound, if wisely improved, infinitely to our advantage, that not only is America raising up a powerful body of literary competitors and coadjutors, the watchful observers and acute critics of all that is put forth on this side of the Atlantic; but the New World furnishes an open area for the development of practical experiments which it would not be very safe or feasible to make on the crowded surface of Europe. Society has been undergoing, in the Western hemisphere, a series of most instructive experimental processes, with a view to ascertain the truth of various political theories hostile to old institutions. The cost, the danger, the explosions and other mischief of these experiments, we have been mercifully spared: but the benefit may be our own. Had they not been made at that safe distance, it might have become necessary, -there would have been at least a stronger temptation, to experimentalise here. For example, the Co-operative System', first suggested in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, has been tried by Mr. Rapp at Harmony, near Pittsburgh, with an equivocal success, which seems to have excited the emulation of Robert Owen. Discarding all religion from his establishment, the latter attempted, with a heterogeneous assemblage of about a thousand persons, something of the same kind in the state of Indiana. What was the result? 'All the co-operators', says Dr. Cooper, 'lost their time and their labour; many of them lost property; Mr. Owen, most of all.' The scheme is not yet given up in this country, because here, its visionary nature has not been exposed by facts; but in America, it is an exploded bubble. I despair', says the American Professor, of finding a cure for the evils attendant upon the unequal distribution of wealth, in the co-operative system. No experiment yet made upon that system, so far as I 'know, offers any permanent hope of continuance, unless under 'circumstances of ignorance and privation that forbid us to wish for its adoption.' (p. 357.)

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In this country, it has been thought by many persons, that the unequal distribution of wealth has some connexion with our aris

tocratic institutions; while our economists have been disposed to resolve all the sufferings of the labouring classes into the general principle by which population presses hard upon the means of subsistence. In America, where there are no aristocratic institu tions, no tithes, no national debt,-where, generally speaking, the wages of labour are high and provisions cheap, and where millions of unoccupied acres await the labour of unborn generations, can there be such a thing as abject poverty and the extreme of wretchedness, with their necessary concomitants, turbulent discontent and radicalism? Let us hear the declaration of the pre

sent Writer.

The misery of the mass of the people in Great Britain is not unknown to, nor is similar misery unfelt in our own country. By the report of the Committee on the pauperism of the lower classes in Philadelphia last year (1829), a woman working with her needle as industriously as the powers of nature will permit, can hardly spare out of her scanty earnings for a twelve months' labour, more than sixteen dollars to supply herself with food. This is a miserable state of things.' Ib. pp. 348, 9.

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By the report of the Secretary of the State of New York, Feb. 9, 1824, it appears that

In the State of New York one person in 220 is a pauper.

Massachusetts

68

Interior of Pennsylvania. 339

State of Pennsylvania. 265

Of the paupers, at least three out of four become so by the use of ardent spirits. A consumption fostered and encouraged by legislators and police magistrates for the sake of taxation. The great manufacture of Pennsylvania is whiskey. The most productive object of city taxation, tippling-houses.' Ib. pp. 302, 3.

From an article on Imprisonment for Debt' in No. LXXI. of the North American Review, we copy, without comment, the following paragraph.

'Considered in connexion with the public good, and the cause of civil liberty, the facts disclosed in the last Annual Report of the Prison Discipline Society, present matter of reflexion painfully important. Seventy-five thousand freemen (debtors) in these United States, it is estimated, are annually subjected, under the existing laws, to the infamous punishment of a prison! And the costs and damages exceed, in many cases, the amount of the debts for which they are imprisoned!

There are several governments called despotic, where no such outrage on reason and humanity is tolerated. That it is submitted to in this community, is a proof how much practical oppression a people

will endure, who enjoy, in theory, the power of providing a remedy. The acts of the British Government, which drove our fathers to arms, were infinitely less grievous than the laws in question. Nor is there any question of national or party politics, that now excites the sensibility of the people of the United States, which so much concerns them as this subject, in regard to which so great an apathy prevails.'

America is the country in which popular liberty has been supposed to be carried to its highest perfection; where at least every white man is free; where republicanism, under various modifications, has had a fair opportunity of displaying its bright attributes, and dispensing its all-comprehending beneficence. Is it too soon to ask for the results? Below the parallel of 25° N., in the Western hemisphere, it would seem, indeed, that Republicanism will not thrive. Federal Republics, and Republics with a central government, have been tried on various plans, in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, the Argentine Provinces, and Chile, with the same ill success. Codes, constitutions, and congresses have sprung up and passed away in quick succession; but hitherto, bitter disappointment has been the only result of every fresh experiment. It appears to be now admitted by the politicians of the North, that, for the present, a monarchy might perhaps be the best form of government for the uneducated population of the Southern States. With regard to Mexico, at one time the most hopeful of the new republics, the North American Reviewers thus confess and apologize for the too sanguine expectations entertained by their countrymen, that it would present a glorious instance of the abstract and practical beauty of a system of dis'tinctive Americanism' founded on republican institutions. 'We saw', they say, an indignant people breaking the fetters of co'lonial tyranny; and it required no wonderful activity of imagi'nation, and implied no national vanity, to believe, that the example which our ancestors had set, was the exciting cause and guiding principle of our Spanish American brethren. In the delusion which the sight of this partial similitude produced, the points of difference were forgotten, and all the repulsive features of the drama were lost sight of. We did not recollect the ac'cidental impulse given to the revolutionary spirit by events in Europe; the horrors of the conflict, stained by excesses and bar'barities unheard of in civilised warfare; the comparative de' gradation of the patriot cause for a long series of years; we put out of view the irregular character of the contest, rarely rising ' above the level of a guerilla combat, and conducted generally ' without any indication of military ability; we forgot that the scene was one exclusively of war and desolation; and that civil ' distinction, such as illumined the characters of our Morris and our Franklin, had no existence in the dark atmosphere of this

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'wild conflict. There was no one man, raised, like the Father of our country, above reproach *. These were points of dissimilarity which, though plain enough now, were not seen then; and the resemblance being once believed to be perfect, the sym'pathy was complete. When the war ceased, and independence was acquired, we were further gratified by the avowed imitation of our example in the adoption of a federal form of government; and we all recollect the glow of pleasure and pride which every one felt and acknowledged, when it was ascertained that this 'course would be adopted by our neighbours. But here the re'semblance ceased; and from this period, the tide of approving sympathy began to ebb.'†

We cannot blame our American brethren for indulging in such fond and false calculations, since similar delusions were cherished by many in this country; and the vain hope that the moral regeneration of the nations is to be effected by political theories and the shadowy forms of liberty, has not yet been abandoned, although the lessons furnished by Poland and Belgium, have been added to those supplied by the Mexican and South American revolutions. But at least in the United States of North America, the abstract and practical beauty of pure democrasy, and the superior efficiency of republican institutions, may be thought to have received a triumphant demonstration. We have no disposition either to depreciate the institutions of our American brethren, or to deny their adaptation to the specific circumstances of their country; but we wish to put on record in our pages the following monitory avowals and admissions, for the benefit of our own countrymen, and in illustration of the important axiom, confirmed by every fresh page added to the book of history, that the political melioration of society must follow or keep pace with, and cannot precede, the moral and religious emancipation of the people.

Liberty and equality are high-sounding words. They may be, and often are, the phrases of selfishness and roguery among those who are

* There now prevails a disposition invidiously to detract from the real merit, and to asperse the character of the patriotic leaders in the South American Revolutions. Bolivar, once indiscriminately eulogised as the Washington of Colombia, and now basely traduced as a tyrant, well deserved the praise due to unimpeachable patriotism and disinterestedness. San Martin was worthy to have been the sovereign of Peru, had not the state of society there been too corrupt to hold together under any thing but an iron despotism. O'Higgins, too, was a man of enlightened mind and unsullied honour. All three had at heart the cause of national independence and rational freedom, and met with the basest ingratitude.

North American Review, No. XXXI. pp. 330, 331.