ritual Telegraph, where a spirit rapped at a table, and announced through the alphabet that his name was "Smibert," and that he had been a surgeon and a poet. How could the most intense self-reflection enable a hearer to decide whether Smibert had or had not been a surgeon? Another spiritualist offers a means of ascertaining the truth of communications, which he may personally have found available or he could scarcely have suggested it, but which presents hopeless difficulties to the mass of mankind. He describes the intervention of a rapping spirit which most unkindly "denied the whole doctrine of modern spiritualism;" and then adds, "Now what are you to make of all this? You can make little of it unless you understand the 'Song of Solomon,' the nature of the spiritual world, and the grammar and syntax of the spirit-language." We do not see how this helps us. We should have more hopes of detecting a waggish spirit unassisted than of getting up spiritual syntax.

With this great blot hanging over it, we must leave Spiritualism. We are bound to say that, however great may be the uncertainty which the theory of waggish spirits throws over all the communications, spiritualists still persevere and believe. They somehow or other cling with astonishing tenacity to the faith that all these flying guitars, and phosphorescent hands, and utterances of the poet Burns, are not a delusion, but a reality. What is the secret of the delusion, if it be one, or the nature of the reality, if it exists, we do not pretend to say. There is something not only strange, but ludicrous, in the records of Spiritualism; but we do not imagine that a mere statement of what is ludicrous can be taken as disposing altogether of a wide-spread belief, and of the phenomena on which it is supposed to rest. Spiritualism affords materials for a scientific investigation. But to be worth any thing, a scientific investigation must be profound, laborious, and accurate. Common sense can restrain us from following any thing which, on the face of it, is ludicrous and absurd; but we may distrust common sense, or we may wish for an account more exhaustive than common sense can give. Modern science may be able to give this account, and to arrange the phenomena of Spiritualism under a certain number of general laws. We do not venture to say whether this is so or not; but we feel sure that no method of treating this and kindred subjects is so utterly worthless as the superficially scientific, which talks vaguely and incoherently about electricity, and galvanism, and nervous forces. Until science can give us something better than such discourses, it is wise to rest content with fighting shy of manifest absurdities, and trust to such temporary guidance as a sense of the ridiculous can afford us.

ART. VII. THE CRÉDIT MOBILIER AND BANKING COMPANIES IN FRANCE.

Report presented by the Board of Administration of the General Association of Crédit Mobilier, at the ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders on the 23rd of April 1856. Translated from the French, and published as an advertisement in the Times of May 21,

1856.

Les Institutions de Crédit en France. Par M. Eugène Forcade. Rerue des deux Mondes, 15 Mars, 1 Avril, 15 Mai, 1 Juin 1856. THE crop of currency-pamphlets is beginning. We again read the old titles, "How shall we get through the Winter?" by a MERCHANT; "Too many Bank-notes," by Bullion; "Ohe jam satis," by Anti-Peel; "Faith in Paper," by a Warwickshire Magistrate; "Infallible Interchange," by GENIUS; "Sufficient Accommodation," by a Manchester Man-familiar to us ten years ago, likely perhaps to be familiar to us ten years hence. These pamphlets are as sure signs of scarce money as many thistles of a poor soil. When the currency is plenty, people know what it is; when it is rare, they try to make out what it is, in order that they may obtain it. We have, however, no such aim; perhaps, indeed, the recent signs of diminishing scarcity may preclude such literature from multiplying. At any rate, though connected with money, our object is much more humble. We have no certain specific for pecuniary evils: no means of returning to any one the money they have spent. We do not even profess to be able to explain all the phenomena of the recent state of the money-market. We only mean to set forth a few facts as to a neighbouring country, whose pecuniary failures have, it is certain, a close connection with our own.

Even this, in ordinary cases, would be no very easy task. The political institutions of a country are a difficult subject for a foreigner: its daily commercial habits are still more so. We are fortunate, however, in having this time a very accomplished guide. M. Eugène Forcade, in a series of essays (published in the Revue des deux Mondes) which we have placed at the head of our article, has thrown so much light on the recent history of the banking companies of France, that there is less risk in writing about them than might be fancied.

A person trained in the current political economy would d priori think that governments, despotic or free, had little to do with the trade of banking. The maxims of free trade forbid

them to engage in that trade as much or more than in any other; they cannot learn it; they have no means of watching transactions, estimating traders, scrutinising bills. Since they cannot know the business themselves, it is desirable they should interfere as little as possible with those who may know it. As usual, their true office is limited to enforcing the moralities of commerce, to ensuring the performance of engagements, to punishing frauds or gross negligence in the keeping of other people's property. So it would seem at first sight. There is something, however, a little interesting in large hoards of money. In a rude age a government is apt to appropriate them; even in a civilised age it is sometimes suspected of doing so; fifty years ago, there was a run on the Bank of France, from a report that the first Napoleon had taken all its reserve to Germany. But in general civilisation is decorous; it is skilled in "indirections:" it has a hundred ways of accomplishing its wishes; it is only after long study that you perceive through their seeming innocence any resemblance to the coarse actions of barbarous societies. On attentive observation, however, it will be found that few governments like to leave quite alone the money of their subjects. They rarely, indeed, keep it themselves; but they very commonly grant a monopoly in keeping it, or a monopoly of the most profitable way of using it when kept, or a monopoly of the right of associating in order to keep it, to some persons who promise financial help.' Mr. Macaulay has explained to us how political in its origin was the Bank of England. A control over its subjects' money in some form almost all governments have been anxious to obtain.

As society goes on, a new temptation on this side seems to beset a government. In early society, regular industry is mostly carried on with people's own money; there is no great facility in borrowing much; no one has much to spare: those who have, are anxious or usurious in lending it. As civilisation progresses, this alters. Large sums of money, by the agency of credit, accumulate in few hands. The holders of these have necessarily great power over the national industry. By the amount they choose to lend, they settle, for the moment, whether that industry shall be much or little; by the selection of the persons to whom they lend, they can stimulate one trade or another-one department of industry or another. Few governments have liked to leave this great power uncontrolled; they have striven by laws to keep it in check, by monopolies to keep it in hands which they can trust, likely to use it as they wish. Some power over it they have commonly thus

succeeded in retaining.

If there be any truth in these remarks in general, it is per

haps in France, at the present moment, that we should expect the realisation of them. We repeat, till we are tired of repeating, that the government does every thing in France; that police-regulation there extends through human life; that even small undertakings are not protected by their minuteness from surveillance; that, in important undertakings, the State has the habit both of taking the initiative and keeping the check,-at once of giving the impulse and of watching that it does not go too far. This is not a feature of the present despotic government only. M. de Tocqueville has shown that a network of administration similar to the present existed before the first revolution. It existed equally under the Legitimist monarchy, the Constitutional monarchy, and the Republic; and its activity was pretty much the same under them all. No one can expect that a power so important, so convenient, so tempting as that of money would be left without government supervision; on the contrary, we should expect the State to take a first place, to assume what is called the "leadership of industry matter of course and at once.

The character and antecedents of the present ruler of France do not diminish this expectation; on the contrary, they would increase it. He has been called a free-trader; it would be truer to call him a free-spender. No one can go to Paris, or, we believe, to any of the largest towns in France, without seeing great signs of the vast industrial works he has undertaken; of new streets and new public edifices; of an immense expenditure in employing labour. Although he appears, perhaps, to understand the maxims of Adam Smith, as far as they have reference to foreign tariffs, better than any former French Government, he has not shown any leaning towards them in matters of internal traffic. On the contrary, a natural taste for large expenditure seems to indispose him to admit the idea. that the daily petty savings of a country are the narrow limit of its public efforts. Socialistic notions, too, from a very early period have had an influence-how great an influence he is too reserved to give us data for saying upon his mind. He would evidently escape from the régime of competition if he could. His very position, according to the view which he so often inculcates of it, as the omnipotent chief of a democracy of which he is the representative, of a people which has exhausted its mission in appointing him, would incline him to take a view rather similar of matters commercial,-to approve rather of a single association which should embody than of competitive units which should constitute and compose the national industry. In a hundred ways the close narrowness of an anxious despotism shrinks from the free energetic play of internal

commercial freedom. Still more important, in this point of view, is the composition of his court. Obvious circumstances separated him from the literary and oratorical statesmen of the monarchy: he wished to be served by those who were essentially and peculiarly men of business; they would have been out of place in a dumb administrative government. The Legitimist families, even if they had been trained in habits of action, have not commonly given their adhesion to a dynasty claiming under the people. The Emperor was almost compelled to choose his most conspicuous associates from the ambitious wealth of the country,-from commercial men, who wish to make money in order to be able to spend money,—whose aim it is to obtain a high social, still better, a court life, from the sums and labours of trade. A spirit of speculation has ever characterised such men. A haste to be rich is part of their essence; and such as are thus in haste, even if innocent, will never be cautious. In France, too, the spirit of Bourse speculation had deeply penetrated the political classes: the name of De Morny explains what we mean. No kind of persons could be imagined to whom the control and management of large sums of money would be more agreeable, or in whose hands it would be more dangerous.

These circumstances account for the inclination of the French Government to obtain the control of its subjects' money. A part of their law supplies the means. By the Code, a public company with limited liability (oddly called société anonyme, in contrast to private partnerships with individual names) can only be obtained from a government-board, which is absolute in practice as well as in theory-which can refuse applications without reason shown, and grant applications without giving an explanation. It is clearly therefore within the competence of a government to give certain of its friends, some of those with whom it has influence, some persons from whom it thinks it can obtain advantages, a real and strictly legal monopoly of a privilege of which able traders will make skilful use, and thereby probably a practical monopoly of certain branches of trade. The circumstances are different from what an English trader would suppose. The French law of commercial association does not allow of companies with transferable shares, but with unlimited liability, of which we have so many. Limited liability is-oddly enough to our notions-made essential to a company, to the division of the capital into shares, and to their transferability at the pleasure of the holder; and in practice, accordingly, is an essential condition of great partnerships. It is true, the société anonyme is not the only form in which this limitation of liability can be obtained; partnerships