was tremendous: my affliction lasted six months; and my sufferings were the more acute, as I was obliged to try to conceal the cause. From the first moment of this cruel discovery, I determined on practising the most genuine simplicity of dress; I wished no longer to excite attention by the allurements of finery, and hoped that I should the more easily escape scrutinizing glances; since criticism and envy ought to be silent on the imperfections of those who humbly acknowlege them. I made no claims; and though I redoubled my attention to my lover, I no longer spoke the language of love, and insensibly repressed all its sensations. My conduct was observed, and a reason for it was required: when it was assigned, its ingenuousness made an impression. By this probity, I still kept possession of a heart during five years, which many women disputed, and of which the inheritance of a great fortune deprived me for ever.

Reflect, my dear friend, on these circumstances. At 30 years of age, men have the folly to rank us among old women, and to blame us for pretensions which they dare to form at the most disgusting period of senility. This injustice deserves pity more than anger; neither take offence at it, nor be frightened into sacrifices. You must consult your vanity, your delicacy, and your reason, in order to discover what claims you still have left. You cannot dissemble that every day robs you of some attraction and some grace: but your mind, exercised by time and experience, will incline you to supply the loss of charms, by virtues which will secure to you an empire not only more mild and, gentle, but certainly much more durable, than that of beauty.'

With this moral reflection, we shall take our leave of this more spirited than moral production. D&B....Y.

ART. VII. Antidote au Congrès de Rastadt, &c.; i. e. An Antidote to the Congress of Rastadt :-or, a Plan for a New Balance of Power in Europe. 8vo. pp. 400. London (a pretence) 1798.

T has somewhere been observed by Mr. Miles, the political writer, that from an untravelled minister we cannot expect wise diplomatic politics: he has however found a minister docile to his own suggestions, if, from the praise of M. Mallet Du Pan, it may be inferred that this work really speaks the sense of the cabinet of London. It revives the project, once rational but now too late, of an union between Holland and Flanders, under the sway of a king of the Netherlands. Who is to execute this project? The king of Prussia, no doubt. Should he succeed, what could prevent his retaining possession of both for himself? Partition is, on the continent, the order of the day no new little powers, mere fuel for future wars, should be created, where great powers are at hand to occupy and to incorporate. The most essential continental interest of Great Britain is to facilitate the extension of Prussian dominion, so

that

that it may abut against the frontier of France. Until then, the northern aggrandizement of France is not at a stand. (See Rev. vol. xxii. p. 405.)

The project suggested, at page 80, for pacification, has the radical fault of lining with petty states the French frontier; all which, in their turn, would have to receive first a French constitution, and then an incorporation with the republic. It is strange that the continental nations should hope to keep the French at bay, without offering to their subjects at least a British constitution; in which the elective structure of the lower house might again attract the confidence of the multitude, recover their allegiance, and renew that principle of adherence in the people at large, without which armies spend their efforts in vain. French principles have been called disorganizing but they have produced, in the nation adopting them, an attraction of cohesion hitherto unknown; which is darting its wedgy crystals in every direction, and severing, with a resistless interstitial force, the comparatively loose and feeble organization of every contiguous state.

There are many passages in this work, which are highly dangerous to the interests of Great Britain; such is the advice insinuated at page 251 to throw up the West India islands, The account given of the financial system of this country tends also to injure its credit. The recommendation to the confederated powers, to employ against France resources borrowed from French legislation, to confiscate all ecclesiastical property, and all the landed property of persons not in the po litics of government, are proposals only worthy of a Jacobin in disguise. In short, no Englishman of probity and of judg ment, if he had read this work with attention, would wish it to form the scale of action for his rulers.

ART. VIII. Tableau Historique

Politique, &c. ; i. e. An Histo rical and Political View of the Losses which the French Nation has suffered by the Revolution and the War, in its Population, its Agriculture, its Colonies, its Manufactures, and its Commerce. By Sir FRANCIS D'IVERNOIS. 8vo. PP. 5co. 8s. Boards. Elmsley and Bremner, &c. London. 1799.

T
HE industrious and skilful investigations of Sir F. D'IVER
NOIS, relative to the interior condition of France, have
repeatedly attracted our approbation, if they have not overawed
our acquiescence. Hitherto, he has principally been occupied
with financial discussion *, but he now undertakes an estimate

* See Rev. vol. xix. p. 515, xxi. p. 537, and xxv. p. 575.

of

Tay.

of the agricultural and commercial state of that country. The telescope of his curiosity certainly discovers many curious phanomena: but it is furnished with a smoked lens, which magnifies and darkens the objects selected for its field of view. Even if no exaggeration attended the statement of the principal data, the inferences deduced from them would still be unalTowable. From a diminution of prosperity, real in several re spects, it is rash in the extreme to expect a speedy declension of power. History rather supports the conclusion that nations become in a military capacity the more formidable, by their neglect and abandonment of public and private luxury, of orderly industry and patient civilization. Cyrus laid waste Lydia and Syria, but founded the most powerful dynasty of Persian kings. The victories of the Romans ceased not during their poverty, but during their opulence. The wealth of Spain was less obstinate than the poverty of the Netherlands: but Holland, grown rich, became less formidable than Prussia with an inferior revenue. Lord Clive lessened by his ravages the prospe rity of Hindostan, yet he promoted the lasting aggrandizement of the British empire. It is not true, then, that national prosperity is a correct measure either of the degree or duration of national power. France may be retrograde as to wealth and civilization, and yet her institutions may be attaining stability

and consistence.

That the sources of French prosperity will dry up is itself problematical. What are the main elements of national wealth? Surely the wages of productive labor, and the profits of stock. The comforts of the most numerous class are every where proportioned to the retribution allowed for their toil: the journeyman is better fed, clad, sheltered and taught, the more his time is worth. Now the wages of labor have undergone, throughout France, (see p. 21,) an immense augmentation; which cannot but facilitate early marriages, the great causes of rapid population and of the purity of domestic morals. Wages have, generally speaking, doubled (p. 106): on which account, men-servants and other classes of unproductive labourers are now nearly unknown; and, as Dupont observes in his report, workmen are become more profuse consumers. The evidence to this point is so decisive, that our author hesitates (p. 227) whether wages have not tripled. This increase of the market-rate of labor is, in part, to be ascribed to the diminished competition resulting from military requisitions; and in part (p. 229) to the abolition of those oppressive laws which prohibited the combinations (les ligues) of journeymen.

The

The general increase of the profits of stock is not less unequivocal. These profits, as is well known, always bear a regular relation to the average interest of money. In the higher lines of business, where much capital is employed, the profits of stock seldom exceed double interest; in the lower lines of business, where little capital is employed, they ascend to triple and quadruple interest. If therefore the average interest of money in France be seven and a half per cent. yearly, the profits of stock must be fifteen, twenty-five, and fifty per cent. This inference our author confirms by stating (p. 210) that commodities, sold retail, gain double the price which they cost wholesale :- so that every grocer and draper in France makes as large a profit on his returns, as an English druggist, This increased amount of profit is accompanied by an increased celerity and a consequent multiplication of return; for (at page 211) we learn that a great abbreviation, or rather abolition, of credit has been adopted by all orders of traders.

We assume, on the authority of private information obtained through a mercantile house at Hamburg, that the average yearly rate of interest in France, between regular and creditable merchants, is about seven and a half per cent.: this might also have been inferred from the data of our author, who says:

Some time after the fall of Robespierre, a discount bank was set up at the hotel Massiac, by means of which, several of the best houses in Paris made and received their payments. From its commence ment, it discounted their paper at per cent. per month, to the amount of their shares or deposits. Since the 18th Fructidor, it has ventured to issue bank-notes.'

We learn afterward (p. 452) that this bank failed: but that another, which discounted at the rate of per cent. per month, maintains its ground. Now if six per cent. be not, and if nine' per cent. be, a rate of discount profitable to a company of bankers, the natural or average rate of interest must lie between both, and amount to about 7 per cent. yearly.

In defiance of the direct testimony of that very trustworthy traveller Dr. Meyer, (see Rev. vol. xxvi. p. 499,) Sir F. D'IVERNOIS endeavours to prove that the agriculture of France, notwithstanding appearances, must be in a dying state. He complains that the landed properties of France are greatly (p.26) subdivided since the Revolution, and commonly cultivated by the proprietor; circumstances unfavorable to large farms, and to the possession of abundant capital by the farmer. This, however, is also the case in China, where agriculture has attained its acmé; and, under the French system of hiring instruments of agriculture, and keeping small stocks of cattle,

15

(the

(the climate rendering manure less essential,) the inconvenience of numerous petty farms is not easily proved. The profits of stock, having increased in other occupations, must also in the farming line be greater than before; and this may easily be the case without any apparent increase of the price of produce, when it is considered that tythes, excises on crops, feudal dues, and game-laws, however iniquitously abolished, have ceased to exist, and that rent is lower than ever. These important benefits are only counteracted by the suppression of the corvées, or parish-road-duty; which has occasioned (p.64) a shameful neglect of the highways a turnpike system ought first to have been substituted. In the estimate of the neat produce of France, it has not been recollected that great part of the country is within the latitude which ripens two crops in a year on the same soil. It is on the other hand acknowleged that the dearth (p. 118) of 1794 and 1795 served as an excuse for numberless encroachments on the waste lands, which the anarchy facilitated, and which have greatly increased the mass of productive surface.-To all these causes of agricultural prosperity, the author opposes a collection of complaints from various districts, which all describe themselves as unable to pay the contribution fonciere, which is certainly a very moderate tax. The exposition of Duprat (p. 82) enumerates grievances of this kind. Be it observed that the French land-tax (or whatever it should be called) is distributed among the several departments, in the complex ratio of their populousness and wealth; and that this wealth is valued in the villages on the scale of the supposed neat produce of the land. Hence every canton or district has a perpetual interest in stating at the lowest its own populousness and produce, and in favouring a similar understatement by its neighbours. With such motives for disparagement; it is only wonderful that the official cadastres should not wholly have untenanted the soil, and have sterilized the legitimate surface of Indre et Loire into another department of the Landes.

On the topic of manufactures, it is observed that Lyons, Sevres, the Gobelins, and all other seats of merely luxurious art, are decaying fast (p. 191): but that Sedan, Louviers, Elbeuf, Carcassone, and Abbeville, preserve a part even of their fine demand; and that, by the aid of some manufactures in the conquered provinces, they are enabled to supply France sufficiently even with coarse cloth (draps legers). The city of Rouen is represented as declining: which may be true of its West India commerce, but it is not true of its manufactures; -we speak after an English traveller in that line of business. Dr. Meyer fully supports what we have already stated, (Rev.