respects at least, of the modern nations to those of antiquity in political science. For while, in the most approved modern States, the rights of the people are guarantied and protected to an extent unknown to the most democratical of the ancient nations, such a monstrosity as a popular assembly exercising either legislative or judicial authority, especially as a finality, is utterly unknown among them. For, be it known, that the popular assemblies of Greece, and even of Rome, exercised not only legislative, but in some important cases judicial authority also, so that, if we are correctly advised as to the jurisprudence of Athens, a decision of the high and world-renowned court of the Arcopagus might, in some instances, have been reviewed and reversed by a popular assembly of the Athenians. What would be thought, at the present day, of submitting an act of Parliament of the British empire to the London populace for ratification? Nay, what would be thought of a "Tammany Hall gathering," or a "grand mass meeting" before the east front of the capitol at Washington, to review a decision of the august tribunal of the Supreme Court of the United States, and to adjudge whether it should be law? Such monstrosities the ancient democracies, nay, their gravest philosophers, beheld without astonishment.

This, perhaps already too extended, review of Grecian Sociology will be concluded with this general remark, which may be safely deduced therefrom-that the average level of humanity, and more particularly of its lower strata, was considerably lower in the Grecian age than in the present; for we find that not only was slavery universal throughout the States of Greece, the most enlightened and advanced people of their age, whereas it has almost entirely disappeared from modern society, but the condition of the great artisan or mechanical class seems to have been very much inferior to what it is in modern times. The great contempt with which this class is habitually spoken of by Plato and Aristotle is incompatible with any other or different conclusion. To what causes this upheaval of humanity is referable, it is not among the specific objects of the present inquiry to consider. But some of those causes will be incidentally noticed in subsequent parts of this review.

Art. II.-REMARKS ON LANDED CREDIT.

IN January, 1807, Sir Samuel Romilly moved, in the British House of Commons, for leave to bring in a bill "for making the freehold estates of persons dying indebted, assets for the payment of their simple contract debts." His bill, for the ten succeeding years, was always thrown out by the Lords. All he succeeded in obtaining was an act passed with the same object in view, but confined to persons in trade. But after the passing of the Reform Bill, his son, the Master of the Rolls, succeeded in getting all his father desired. Sir Samuel reasoned that a person owning a freehold estate should be liable for all his just debts of all kinds to the full value of that estate. The then existing law provided "that a man seized of a freehold estate may contract debts to any amount without subjecting the fee of such property to any responsibility for their discharge, provided he has not entered into any bond or security under seal." He

argues that this person may go on in a system of profusion more generous than just, and incur debts, and at last leave that estate, which had been the source of the creditor's confidence, to an entire stranger, and thus defeat the just claims of the creditors. But Sir Samuel Romilly overlooked the important fact that that estate, if exonerated by law, could not be involved in any just claims, for the lenders must surely have known the law, or ought to have known it. And the risk of lending was accordingly taken. The law, as it stood, was a good law. It simply declared that the ground-the soil-should not be liable for these debts. And has a government not the deepest interest in the permanent preservation, to their just owners, of all soil rights? The whole argument of Sir Samuel Romilly was in favor of the lenders-to give usury further powers and further chances of eating up the country. The effectual and hereditary preservation of the soil rights lie at the foundation of all good and permanent government. Debt, either in a social or moral point of view, is never a good thing. The law, that the soil shall not be mortgaged, was a warning to all, that if they lent, they must do it on other securities; and a just declaration of the rights of the people, and of the determination of the law to preserve to them the comforts of home, the security of title, and all those numerous and highly important advantages, individual and social, local and general, which flow from the uninterrupted and undisturbed rights of the freeholders. This law, which Sir Samuel Romilly labored so ardently to overthrow, was a warning to usurers that whatever other interests their cupidity might lead them to destroy, the vitals of the country should at least remain untouched.*

The principles of the laws of entail and of primogeniture are coeval with the existence of man, and are the chief pillars of the agrarian system. There is no insolent prerogative in the one, as Gibbon so unjustly remarks; neither is there in the other anything but what is eminently fitted to secure the chief agricultural interests of a nation. And surely no Legislature can look with indifference upon any measures calculated to secure the uninterrupted descent, from sire to son, of homestead rights and privileges.

In the Edinburg Review, for October, 1857, there is an article on Landed Credit. One of the reasons urged by the reviewer for the establishment of land banks is, that in Britain, "by reason of entail, large tracts of land are almost permanently locked up in such a manner that, from want of capital, they remain in their unimproved state." This reason cannot apply to America, where the land is neither held in entail, nor subjected to the evils of extensive proprietorship. But the above quotation contains really no argument at all. For the owners of these entailed estates must either be indebted or clear of debt. If indebted, it surely cannot be any relief to have that indebtedness still further increased. If

* Since the period of the last commercial crisis, a reaction seems, in some measure, to have set in. Last spring it was proposed by the press in Western Canada to put an arrest on the legal power of collecting small debts. The Lord Chief Baron Pollock, of England, has recently proposed to abrogate that power, and the New York Tribune, and other papers in the United States, have reechoed the sentiment. We have long been of the opinion that this is the radical cure for the evils of usury-at least it is the only one within our reach. It would obviously tend to destroy the present system of credit, by making cash the rule, and credit the exception. It would be a warning to all, that if they lend on interest, or sell on credit, they must do so on their own responsibility. But we shall hardly see such a measure passed in our days. What, for example, would be the effect of such a measure upon the legal profession, the avarice of whose followers has been a proverb since the world began? Would it not undergo the fate of Samson when he was shorn of his lucks:

they are not in debt, then are they in that very position which leaves heart, and head, and hand, free to increase wealth. A borrowing of capital would perhaps, in some instances, serve to draw forth sanguine efforts for a season, but the end of all these ways, it is too well known, is such a thing as an Encumbered Estates Court, or a sale "in virtue of a bond and disposition in security."

Everywhere, and at all times, has the rapid accumulation of debt falsified all hopes held out as to the advantage of borrowing, either to the lender. or borrower. Let me point, for example, to the case of Ireland, a country enjoying a most fertile soil and delightful climate; only some two or three millions of pounds have been received from the commissioners of the encumbered estates by those who held mortgages upon properties burdened to the extent of twenty-eight or thirty millions. Let me point to Chicago, the "mushroom" city; the assessed value of its taxable property is about $30,000,000-the amount secured therein is over $100,000,000. Let me point to Canada-this fair province is already irretrievably involved in debt, and the startling fact is announced to me in a letter from the Hon. George Alexander, a member of the Legislative Council, that every cleared 100 acres of land is mortgaged to the extent of $600. Let me point to ancient history--the vice of usury occasioned the ruin of most of the cities and smaller States where it was tolerated— it gave birth to the greatest calamities in all the provinces of the Roman empire-it introduced disorders which contributed very much to subvert the constitution of the Roman Commonwealth. Let me point to sacred history. In the days of Nehemiah this very system of land credit resulted in the most deplorable evils, alienating the hereditary rights of the freemen of Israel, and selling into bondage their sons and daughters.

It is reasoned that capital, so abundant in England, is to a great extent excluded from the soil by artificial means, or, in other words, by the want of facilities in borrowing and lending. Capital, or rather the ability to employ labor, may be, in the hands of its owner, a good enough thing. Borrowed capital, applied to the soil, whilst fostering idleness on the part of the lender, actually enhances those prices which it is intended should be cheapened, and encourages the existence of a host of new producers. The reviewer further 66 says more capital would produce more food;" and "a population consuming more than the soil now produces, but by no means more than it could produce, have, it would seem, a sort of inherent right to expect that any obstacle which interferes with the natural flow of capital to the land, should be removed." Now, these two statements are not only exceedingly ambiguous, but proceed upon false data, and manifest great ignorance of the first principles of economy. Here we again see "capital," as it is called, raised to an undue prominenceeverything made to depend upon the existence of "capital." More

For the information of Canadian readers, I give Mr. Alexander's statistics, according to last census returns:

The total number of cleared acres in Upper Canada are.. in Lower Canada.....

66

Allowed for subsequent increase.......

Total number of cleared acres..

3,702,713 3,605,147

7.307,860

2,692,140

10,000,000

Putting the provincial debt at $60,000,000, gives us $600 on every 100 acres of cleared land. This of course does not include wild, or bush land, but only that which is productive, and consequently responsible for the debt.

capital could not produce more food. How is it possible that an increase of gold can produce an increase of food? Cover Great Britain from John O'Groats to Land's End with golden sovereigns, would they have any more bread, or beef, or porridge? There has, for many years, been an uninterrupted flow of gold into Great Britain. But are they better off on this account? Has pauperism decreased? Has crime decreased? What amelioration has there been in the condition of the laboring population? Have the mill workers been removed a degree beyond pauperism? Have commercial convulsions become less frequent? It takes now the enormous sum of twenty millions of dollars annually, to feed the hungry paupers of England and Wales alone.

Money, real money, is neither more nor less than an instrument of exchange, and as it, also, is one of those things for the possession of which the miner must give his labor, so, instead of "capital producing labor," it is just the reverse, for labor must produce capital.

Nature has imposed no obstacles to the proper flow of labor to the land. The application of labor is the only capital which it demands. But usury has diverted the labor from the land, and disarranged the whole constitution and division of society. One-fifteenth part only of the population of Britain is engaged in agriculture, and there are not more than 150,000 able-bodied laborers in the whole country. As the result of the speculation engendered by usury, large cities have been fostered into an abnormal state of growth, and have drawn to them, as to a focus, a large proportion of that energy and labor which ought to be devoted to the cultivation of the soil. Whether, therefore, we look at the effects of usury on commerce or agriculture, we see nothing but the same pernicious results.

An increase of the metallic currency in any country must ever indicate, or ought ever to indicate, that it has been received in exchange for articles of similar value. Can any one really imagine that this great law of our social economy, applicable to nations and to the world at large, can every be made to bend to the so-called interests of a particular class? It is true, I admit, that the lands of Great Britain do not yet produce near the quantity of food they are capable of doing under different division and management. But a system of mortgages, such as desired, would only aggravate those evils introduced and propagated by the feudal tenure. The land of Britain might possibly be induced to feed its present population. But under its present state of division the thing is impossible. Enormous estates have engendered many hurtful lusts. Enormous wealth and power have their counterpart in abject misery and pauperism. To speak the truth, there is no country in a more dependent position than Britain in her present circumstances; a fact which is but too well evidenced by the alarming results of every fresh commercial convulsion. She is entirely dependent on foreign demands; and there is a sort of necessity imposed upon her to force poor John Chinaman to buy her opium and calicoes at the point of the sword.

Destroy the paper currency of Britain, and she becomes at once the most helpless nation in the world. And it cannot be otherwise with any community which has, for two centuries, deluded itself and neighbors with promises to pay; and in which the usury of money, the usury of goods, and the usury of land, have held long, free, and full development. A commercial revulsion, which would only cripple the United States,

would dismember Great Britain. Let the readers of this magazine attentively weigh the results of the crisis of 1857 upon both countries.

The arguments in favor of facilitating the means of mortgaging lands, by encouraging a flow of capital to the soil in the way of borrowing, overthrow the first and most essential principles of trade and labor. For these principles plainly teach us that the natural flow of capital to the soil, depends upon the amount and value of the labor expended on that soil. The introduction of foreign capital to be incorporated with the soil, introduces foreign interests, foreign partnerships, and, too often, foreign possessors. It is a method of progress which, in its vain and foolish anticipations, subverts all the simple order of nature.

No one can calmly read the article in the Edinburg Review without coming to the conclusion, that those obstructions in the way of land owners borrowing money on the security of their lands, which the reviewer labors to prove so detrimental to national and individual interests, are, in reality, their best and surest safeguards. Mark this languagethe italics are ours-"If persons possessing capital once found they could lend or invest their money with ease, and the present system were altered, we should, in all probability, soon find the class of persons who borrow on landed security no longer confined to those who do so from hard necessity, and to whom secresy is of importance. On the contrary, another class would be tempted to come forward, in whose case the fact of borrowing would be no sign of poverty, but one of the best means of developing their own resources, and those of the nation!" This writer sees not one of the thousand evils of property groaning under debt. He deliberately shuts his eyes to these evils, and holds forth the strange doctrine, that debts and indebtedness indicate a state of health and prosperity, and would remove every obstacle on the way to destruction. If these are considered the means of developing our national wealth, the sooner society is purged of such foolery the better.

We must clearly class the Edinburg writer with the worthy Scottish baronet of the past generation. Sir John Sinclair dabbled in finance. He says, "the public debts of a nation not only attract riches from abroad with a species of magnetic influence, but they also retain money at home." An idea as ridiculous as it is contrary to fact.

The reviewer would wish to see created in England and Scotland a sort of national landed debt. He speaks familiarly of payments towards interest and sinking funds, and of ultimate redemption. Perhaps he has forgotten to inquire to what extent the soil of Great Britain is already mortgaged on account of debts, or of its ability to bear further pressure. I am sure I need not remind him, that a tax must be ground out of somebody to pay the interest of this borrowed money. He would like to see the mortgages canceled at some period in the distant future. But-to use his own argument-why cancel the debt at all? Would not the same desire, on the part of these thrifty borrowers, to have their lands progressing on this road to unlimited wealth, exist then as now? If the debt is a good thing now, it would be a good thing then. Happy English people! Happy Scottish people! who can swallow such bait, and deliberately pile debt upon debt, tax upon tax. You seem amazingly to delight in trusts and pledges, debts and mortgages. But the mortuum vadium will yet prevail.

The Land Credit Institutions of the continent of Europe "create habits