certain events have almost banished silver from the circulation of Britain, and substituted gold in its place. But, though people still contract to pay pounds sterling, they merely bind themselves to pay optionally either so much silver, or its value in gold, at a rate fixed and known at the time of making the bargain. The proportion between the supply of and demand for gold, too, will regulate the price of that article, and fix the real value of the money mentioned in the contract, more or less exclusively as it may happen more or less completely to usurp the place of silver in the currency; and thus, in bargaining nominally for silver, the seller will have the real value of gold only, or even of bank paper, in his eye, knowing that his price will be paid in that form.

There are, however, some occasions on which the new names are used in contracting or in keeping accounts. All gambling transactions are stated in guineas, and so are many contracts of insurance; nay, in some parts of the country, particularly in Scotland, where bank paper has long formed the bulk of the currency, the lower people are accustomed to reckon in notes, meaning pounds. In these cases, the money of account coincides with the medium actually circulating. Yet still he who promised to pay twenty guineas may perform his contract by giving twenty-one pounds in silver; and he who promises twentyone notes finds his creditor very ready to accept twenty guineas. It is, therefore, indifferent in what language bargains are made and accounts kept, provided the terms used are always defined. While there is a double circulation in a country, when we talk of one metal, we in truth mean either of the two at a known relative valuation fixed by law, or settled in the market; and when we call one of them the measure of property, we only mean, that the other having nearly disappeared from the circulation, the real price of the one which remains is

alone attended to in all contracts. If both continue in circulation, they are both measures and standards. Each may be compared with all other commodities, and both may be compared together. The value of either may thus be measured by the other; and the value of ordinary property may be measured in either, or in terms applicable to both. A guinea is equal in value to twentyone shillings; and a certain quantity of wheat is equal in value to twenty shillings, or to 20-21 of a guinea, or to a pound, which, though it signified only so much silver, now signifies indifferently twenty shillings, or 20-21 of a guinea, or, finally, a piece of paper equivalent to either.

When the comparative value of the precious metals is constantly varying, the government will in vain attempt to regulate their relative prices by any mint arrangements, or public laws. Admitting, what the whole history of the coinage proves to be impracticable, that, at the moment of coining, we should be able accurately to adjust those prices according to the market rates, in a short time these will vary; one of the metals will be overvalued, and the coins of the other will of course be driven out of circulation. Experience proves the folly of attempting to follow the changes of the bullion market, and how much better it would be to save at once the double expence of coining in two metals, than to coin in such a manner as must ensure the speedy banishment of one of them. By fixing the relative mint prices of the precious metals, and fixing them wrong, which is almost the same thing, we have lost the benefits of a double circulation, and acquired our present silver currency. While this practice continues, we can no more expect to see silver carried to the mint, or retained in circulation after government has coined it, than we could hope for a supply of foreign wheat, were we on the same principle to fix its price below the level of the home market. It is unnecessary to fix the rela

tive prices of gold and silver, under pretence that the lower orders, and especially those residing in distant parts of the country, cannot possibly know the variations of the bullion market; for the bullion market exists every where, and all men are traders in it. The lower orders are left exposed to the same ignorance in buying their bread and selling their labour, both of which are exchanged for silver.

Lord Liverpool proposes, indeed, that the guinea should be made the standard; in other words, that twenty real guineas should be denominated by authority equal to twenty-one ideal pounds sterling. And, therefore, he concludes, that if the shillings are left to find their relative value to the guinea, much more confusion will be introduced among the lower people, than if the shillings were fixed in relation to the pound sterling, and the guinea left to take its relative value to them.

It is manifestly the same thing, whether the shilling is called the twentieth part of a pound, and the guinea left to find its value in terms of the shilling, or whether the guinea is denominated the 21-20 of a pound, and the shilling left to find its price in terms of the guinea. So long as the real value of the pieces is retained, their proportions to each other, however named, cannot affect any person; and, even supposing a real difference, the labourer will both demand and receive as many good shillings of wages when the price of gold has made the guinea worth 20 shillings, as he did when that metal was a little dearer. Government should coin both guineas and shillings of the known fineness; and, to save trouble, the weight also of the pieces should be retained. A regulation respecting wear might probably be added with advantage; and it should be understood, either that the guinea is 21-20, or that the shilling is 1-20 of of a pound sterling, it is absolutely indifferent which. Government has then done all it ought to do; and the

For the Literary Magazine.

THE REFLECTOR.

NO. X.

Concluded from page 383.

HENCE it follows, if the above reasoning be just, that we dare not break those secret and indefinable bonds which unite us to our friends; they are the bonds of love, which cannot be destroyed without a shock to nature. We dare not deprive ourselves of the objects of our affections for an inte rested purpose, because we know, that no sooner have we committed the irrevocable deed, but our sufferings must commence, aggravated too by the reflection that the act can never be recalled, and have been laid upon us by ourselves as a consequence of our nourishing inordinate and criminal desires; desires which, now they are gratified, fail to produce that satisfaction which they seemed to possess while seen by the eye of hope penetrating the shades of futurity.

It is hard to tell whether love or grief is the cause which induces us to pay that earnest attention, that incessant care which we are accustomed to bestow on those of our con. nections who are in a state of suffering. This seems to be a strange observation; but, on investigation, we find it so in a less degree than we at first imagined. Suppose the reader's parent has arrived at a great age, and is afflicted with the various infirmities incident to an existence long protracted; suppose

him suddenly taken ill; with what breathless expectation would he not hasten to endeavour to relieve him! he would sit by him day and night, and leave no means untried to restore him to that same infirm and feeble state, in which his last illness found him. This seems to be the effect of love. Does he love his parent whoendeavours to extend the limits of existence beyond the period of enjoyment, or even satisfaction; when his only portion is pain and infirmity; whose days of temporal felicity are departed; who sees no prospect of a happier fate except in that unknown land of promise, whose frontier is the grave; and who there wishes to lay down the burthen of life, and sink to rest? In what manner is the agency of love proved here? Could his bitterest foe do more than make him feel as long as possible the pains of infirm old age? His prospect beyond the grave is bright beyond all description, beyond all conception; where the weakness of age will be exchanged for the ever-during vigour of eternal youth; where its wrinkles will vanish and be replaced by the bloom of immortality, and all the ills of life be exchanged for happiness which will never end, nor cloy in the enjoyment.

Here the reader would act unreasonably. He loves his parent, he would say; yet he is unwilling to suffer him to attain the object of his wishes. He loves him, and would prevent his leaving an unhappy for a happy world.

Is it love, then, or the dread of grief, which would produce so much inconsistency? Could not he argue thus? My parent is old and miserable with the infirmities of age; he is ill, and wishes to die; he feels himself no longer of any use to society; he is incapable of enjoyment, or even comfort; he has now a prospect of exchanging this for a better life: but I love him, and am not willing to part with him. But is it the nature of love to gratify it self, and not its object? Certainly not; he wishes to die; be it mine to suffer him to attain the comple

In

tion of his wish, now while it may be innocently accomplished. what manner can I better evince my affection? If I send for a physician, his skill may enable him to live a short period longer; but will I not be doing wrong to gratify my own feeling at the expence of his? Certainly I shall and therefore it is better every way to suffer him to expire.

Who would not think this reasoning the reasoning of an inhuman savage, of a man devoid of feeling, of a murderer, and a parricide? Most of my readers would, I think; and yet the reasoning is just, when the prejudices of habit and the feelings of humanity are laid aside. Love is supposed always to seek the felicity of the object on which it reposes; yet here its motive is avowedly the reverse. Instead of seeking to promote the happiness of the individual, it takes pleasure in prolonging its misery, as the executioner keeps the wretch extended on the wheel, and delays the blow which will relieve him from sensibility to torture.

If it is acknowledged that love invariably seeks to promote, and not to marr the happiness of its object, then it cannot be love that induces us to prolong, when we can, the existence of an infirm parent who wishes to die. No: it must be something else; perhaps self-love. This sentiment makes us endeavour to promote our own felicity. But how is the object affected by witnessing the infirmity and extending the existence of a slowly expiring parent! It is true, self-love would induce us to prefer the protraction of his existence, if the grief, which might be expected to follow his death, was believed to be the most painful emotion. But this operates for and not against the position I have taken; for, admitting the justice of the opinion, it would prove the dread of grief the most powerful emotion.

It is, perhaps, in vain to attempt to trace any action up to the causes which produced it. Some of them may generally be developed, but not all. There is frequently a set of undefin

and sometimes even by false pretensions to those which he either possesses in no degree, or in so very slender a degree that he may well enough be said to possess them in no degree. Far from despising your esteem, he courts it with the most anxious assiduity. Far from wish ing to mortify your self-estimation, he is happy to cherish it, in hopes that in return you will cherish his own. He flatters in order to be flattered. He studies to please, and endeavours to bribe you into a good opinion of him by politeness and complaisance, and sometimes even by real and essential good offices, though often displayed, perhaps, with unnecessary ostentation.

The vain man sees the respect which is paid to rank and fortune, and wishes to usurp this respect, as well as that for talents and virtues. His dress, his equipage, his way of living, accordingly, all announce a higher rank and a greater fortune than really belong to him; and, in order to support this foolish imposi tion for a few years in the beginning of his life, he often reduces himself to poverty and distress long before the end of it. As long as he can continue his expence, however, his vanity is delighted with viewing himself, not in the light in which you would view him if you knew all that he knows; but in that in which he imagines he has, by his own address, induced you actually to view him. Of the illusions of vanity this is, perhaps, the most common. Obscure strangers who visit foreign countries, or who, from a remote province, come to visit, for a short time, the capital of their own country, most frequently attempt to practise it. The folly of the attempt, though always very great and most unworthy of a man of sense, may not be altogether so great upon such as upon most other occasions. If their stay is short, they may escape any disgraceful detection; and, after indulging their vanity for a few months, or a few years, they may return to their own

VOL. V. NO. XXXIII.

homes, and repair, by future parsimony, the waste of their profusion.

The proud man can very seldom be accused of this folly. His sense of his own dignity renders him careful to preserve his independence, and, when his fortune happens not to be large, though he wishes to be decent, he studies to be frugal and attentive in all expences. The ostentatious expence of the vain man is highly offensive to him. It outshines, perhaps, his own. It provokes his indignation as an insolent assumption of a rank which is by no means due; and he never talks of it without loading it with the harshest and severest reproaches.

The proud man does not always feel himself at his ease in the company of his equals, and still less in that of his superiors. He cannot lay down his lofty pretensions, and the countenance and conversation of such company overawe him so much that he dares not display them. He has recourse to humbler company, for which he has little respect, which he would not willingly chuse, and which is by no means agreeable to him; that of his inferiors, his flatterers, and dependants. He seldom visits his superiors, or if he does, it is rather to show that he is entitled to live in such company, than for any real satisfaction that he enjoys in it. It is, as lord Clarendon says of the earl of Arundel, that he sometimes went to court, because he could there only find a greater man than himself; but that he went very seldom, because he found there a greater man than himself.

It is quite otherwise with the vain man. He courts the company of his superiors as much as the proud man shuns it. Their splendour, he seems to think, reflects splendour upon those who are much about them. He haunts the courts of kings and the levees of ministers, and gives himself the air of being a candidate for fortune and preferment, when in reality he possesses the much more precious happiness, if he knew how to enjoy it, of not being one. He is

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