factures too dear for thofe who could afford to purchase them at their former value. The other, that a diminution of the balance of trade, without which (it is thought) a commercial nation could not thrive, would be a neceffary confequence of a contraction of our exports. To the former, the author's answer is, that the price of labour has within the prefent century been raised from 12 to 15 per cent. in England, and yet, fo far from having experienced any falling off in her export trade, fhe has had the fatisfaction of feeing it trebled during that period. The other objection he meets in the following manner:

---Nothing can be more capable of making a man implicitly follow an opinion adopted in France than that he should see it established in England, and refpected throughout the reft of Europe, though it were obvious that it was the intereft of the reft of Europe to take the moft vigorous steps to prevent itself from being involved in the fatal confequences of fuch an opinion if well founded, or to overturn and destroy it, if not established on an uninterrupted series of undisputed facts.I will confine myself here to fome obfervations on these undif puted facts:-from which I think an inference may be drawn diametrically oppofite to this generally received opinion.

England, it is faid, has an annual balance in her favour, of 4 millions fterling; and France of 70 millions of livres, or about 3 millions fterl.; confequently, there must be every year a balance of 7 millions to fatisfy the voracity of these two monsters.

Now it must be obferved that it was a common faying in France that the fall of that kingdom would begin, when its balance of 70 millions of livres fhould begin to decline; and that it was a generally received opinion in England that, when her balance should fink to between 2 and 3 millions fterling, fhe muft neceffarily become bankrupt.

It must also be obferved that the annual importation of gold and filver from America (almost the only country from which thefe precious metals are drawn,) does not exceed, if it amounts to, 6 millions fterling of this fum we may fuppofe the Spaniards and Portuguese, who extract it from their mines in America, keep a fixth for their own wants. The rest of Europe must contrive as well as it can to club or make up the two millions fterling, which would obviously be wanting to complete the annual balance required by the voracity of England and France. Where does Europe find them? where has the found them even for the last twenty years, not to go farther back? I am fure I cannot tell: but you will find the pretenfions and wants of France, on this head, made out and eftablished in M. Necker's justly esteemed work on the finances of that kingdom; and the very exact ftatements made by Sir Charles Whitworth of all the balances of England with the rest of Europe, particularly from 1752 to 1773, fhew an annual balance in favour of England amounting to 4,180,000l. fterling.

You will farther obferve, from thefe ftatements, that her trade with Pruflia is the only one in Europe that does not yield a balance

1

in her favour; and that there is not one other country in Europe to which fhe does not export three times the quantity of goods which she exported at the beginning of the century; and that the imports in precifely the fame proportion from every ftate in Europe with which the has any dealings, France only excepted, which lies at her door.

Hence it follows that, if England has in the space of a century trebled her commerce, the other countries with which the trades have trebled the means by which they feed the trade that they carry on with her. If thefe obfervations be founded in fact, it unquestionably follows alfo, that these countries must have been gainers as well as England, or they would not have continued and even extended their commercial dealings with her.

Thirty years ago, the fpecie in circulation in England amounted to at least 25 millions fterl.: if to these we were to add 4 millions 180 thousand pounds a-year for thirty years, which he is fuppofed to clear annually by her balance, fhe ought to have now in fpecie full 150 millions sterling; whereas in point of fact he has not at the very moft above 30 millions.

Now if England and France have really received yearly 7 millions fterling from Spain, Portugal, and other countries, of which these two nations pretend they have annually ftripped the rest of Europe, as the rest of Europe thinks it really has been ftripped of it, it is evident that the money has only paffed and repaffed through their hands to the places in which it was wanted, leaving every where behind it, to those who carry on this trade, the profit, as juft as it is neceffary, which they ought to find in it.'

We cannot follow our author in his detail of the manner by which he explains this mystery of the balance of trade; we refer our readers to the work itself, p. 262, &c.

We would here close our account of this elaborate performance, if we did not think it of importance to take fome notice of the laft chapter; in which the author fpeaks of the prefent war, and urges the ftrongest reafons to perfuade the allied powers, if they wish well to themselves, to refolve to prosecute it with redoubled vigour. This feems, indeed, to be conceived in the true spirit of a French emigrant, against which we ought ever to be on our guard, even when manifefted by the very beft characters among them ;-in the number of whom we strongly incline to rank the Marquis DE CASAUX. Speaking of the objects of former wars and of the prefent, he thus emphatically expreffes himself:

In the wars to which I have alluded, and which, with their fufpenfions and interruptions, were lengthened out to a period of ten centuries, the champions fought for the honour and advantage of reigning over laborious, brave, and wealthy men: but in our days it is a monstrous convention that carries on the war, a convention that has promised to over run all Europe, and leave it inhabited only by villains, and fpiritlefs wretches, and every where to mark its pro APP. REV. VOL.XVI.

M m

grefs

grefs by heaps of ruins. Its conduct wherever it has been able to get a footing, or even to penetrate for a few moments, has proved that it meant to leave behind it only fuch ruins as might be neceffary to inform pofterity that, at the clofe of the 18th century, Europe was inhabited by ten polifhed, induftrious, rich, and powerful nations; but that they were not able to maintain their ground for more than a fmall number of years, after a monstrous convention had fignified to them an order to disappear and return to the chaos, into which it was refolved once more to plunge fociety *.

It would feem as if Europe were beginning to fufpect the poffibility of this dreadful catattrophe; and if he has, throughout her whole extent, been fuficiently chaftened courageouily to adopt all the means capable of warding off fuch a calamity not only for the prefent, but for ever, it appears as if, at least in the fouthern parts of this quarter of the globe, the nations were beginning to feel the neceffity of fufpending and fincerely adjourning all private projects of conqueft and dominion,' (has the horrid cafe of Poland efcaped our author's attention) when her ftates are obviously reduced to the neceffity of fighting even for mere existence, when it is evident that they must either cease to exift, or immediately deftroy this monstrous convention, which promises to deftroy every thing that it cannot throw into confufion; and which would not renounce for the present fo atrocious a project, if it were not for the purpofe of making greater preparations for it, and rendering the fuccefs more certain. Perhaps England was the first to open her eyes, and difcover the neceffity of this ftrange alternative. She might, it may be faid, have prevented this neceffity, by offering her mediation at the moment in which the then rulers (who were for war, only that they might by means of it destroy royalty in France, and afterwards make ufe of France as an inftrument for effacing even the name of King from the rest of Europe.) forced the unfortunate Louis XVI. to declare war. At that moment, no doubt, the internal movements of the kingdom, the refult of the real fentiments of the people, which revolutionary armies that did not yet exift could not then have ftifled, would have fhewn to the handful of men of blood that forced from him that fatal declaration, the weight of fo powerful a mediation as that of England, who alone poffeffed the means of moving the reft of Europe, and who might nevertheless offer to France, as well as to Austria and Pruffia, fuch explanations as fhould fatisfy them, and fuch propofitions as might reconcile all parties.-If England has loft this occafion of immortalizing herself in the nobleft way; if she has liftened perhaps too much to the voice of a refentment, natural enough it is true, but the confequences of which are still far from being fettled, and the effects of which it becomes daily more and more difficult to forefee or to calculate; fhew me the power in Europe, whofe views have been fo juft, whofe intentions fo pure, whofe conduct fo free and open, whose measures fo vigorous, and at the fame time fo wife, as that it might venture to

It should not be forgotten that the Marquis wrote this work while terror, destruction, and barbarity, formed the fyftem of the temporary rulers in France.

reproach

reproach England with this want of greatnefs, delicacy, precaution, and forefight!'

Our author fuppofes, (would that his fuppofition fhewed us the full extent of the expenditure!) that the war fhall have cost us 30 millions fterling, and that, with the lofs of that fum, peace and order may be fo established in Europe, that the powers may be able to difarm, without any danger to their governments or property. He then fays that, were we to renounce what he calls the abfurd and useless plan of employing a million annually in reducing the national debt, we might find in that fum a fund for nearly the whole of the intereft of the 30 millions expended on this war: but, fuppofing that new taxes to the amount of 1,500,000l. annually fhould be neceffary for the purpose of fafely and honourably terminating it, he asks what would be the effects of them on the different articles of confumption? In anfwering this question, he says that he proceeds not on theory, but on the experience of a whole century:

The American war,' fays he, has loaded the English nation with a debt of, I will not fay 100 millions fterling, which is fometimes really worth 90 millions, fometimes 95, fometimes 60, and fometimes 70; but I will fay it has loaded the people of England with 5 millions a-year in taxes. Soon after they were laid on, the price of every thing was raised, thanks to the freedom left to every clafs of men to balance their various interefts, and to the very reasonable efforts that each of thefe interefts made to fuffer as little as pof-fible by the general advance in the price. If we may judge of the rife on every article connected either with manufactures or agriculture, by that which took place on wheat, it will appear that, on the whole, the rife was from 12. to 15 per cent.; for, at the beginning of the American war, the average price of wheat was at 40 fhillings per quarter; it rofe foon afterward, and has for fix or seven years continued at between 44 and 46 fhillings. I had foretold that it would not exceed 44, for my forefight did not go fo far as to fuppofe a perfeverance in the fyftem of annually facrificing a million fterling to that idol-the reduction of the national debt.

Now let us obferve that, if, while the price of every article produced by husbandry and manufactures was raifed, the price of labour had ftill continued the fame, the unfortunate clafs of men who live by their induftry would have loft one-half of their enjoyments, and their employers would have loft the profits which they make every year on this confiderable part of their fales, amounting, perhaps, to a third-but in England people calculate too well to be complaifant or unjust for any length of time. From Mr. Young's Annals of Agriculture, it appears that the price of labour in that line has increased on an average from 12 to 15 per cent.; and every mafter manufacturer knows that the wages of journeymen have increased in the fame proportion.

Remark, alfo, that the taxes were laid only on luxuries and manufactures, but that did not prevent the different articles fold by

the farmer, and the other neceffaries of life, from becoming just as dear as if they had been taxed directly.

• What difference is there, then, between the prefent condition of the English, and that in which they flood before the mightily disastrous American war, a war which increafed their imports and exports above 20 per cent.? The only difference that I fee is, that they now fell, buy, and enjoy under the number 112 or 115, instead of felling, buying, and enjoying under the number 100, as they did before the

war.

. Now, 5 millions a year produced by additional taxes having raifed the prices of the different articles of agriculture and manufactures no more than 12 or 15 per cent., notwithstanding a system of taxation three times more expenfive than that which I have propofed, how much may they be raifed when new taxes to the amount of 1,500,000l. a year are laid on?-About 4 per cent.; and after this operation, all the pecuniary evils of the prefent war, as far as they affect the English nation, will be at an end, and they will enjoy every thing, under the number 116 or 119 instead of the number 112 or 115, as they did before this horrid war. The feptier of wheat will, on an average, coft a fhilling and fome pence more than it cofts at prefent: but what is that to the labouring or working man, if his wages be raised in proportion? It is equally certain that the national debt will be increased but what fignifies that to the nation, fince the value of every article is neceffarily increased in the fame proportion? Indeed the people would think lefs about this debt, if they would please to obferve that it has been clearly proved that it would be equally abfurd and ufelefs to pay it off.'

When the author fays that the value of every thing increases with the taxes, he may be right enough with refpect to moft things but we would wish to know how thofe, whofe whole fubfiftence arifes from rent-charges on eftates, which they can never raife, or from the intereft of certain fums placed in the precarious

In ufing this ironical epithet, the Marquis does not feem to have taken into the account of the expence of war, the value of the great number of brave men who always perifh in that TRULY horrid bufinefs! Politicians are generally, and, we fear, justly confidered as cold-blooded men, who, in eftimating the expences of war, confider only the money, not the lives that it will coft; who deem very lightly: of butchering their fellow-mortals, and fhedding torrents of human blood, in order to accomplish their defigns. Humanity, religion, (the CHRISTIAN religion!) would view fuch purposes, and their conSequences, in a different light; and would be apt to exclaim, "Perish!

for ever Perith! thefe alledged advantages! advantages only to furvivors, which are to be purchafed by the flaughter of hundreds of thousands of our fellow-creatures!" Including both fides, 150,000 are computed to have fallen in the unhappy conteft with our colonial brethren; and how has that number been already doubled and trebled in the present war! What advantage, what recompence, have the SLAIN?