than to win. Therefore let us keep gold when we have it. The expense of this course is less than the operation now pursued. To restore the gold to the bank, discounts are raised by two to five per cent. in accordance with the exigency. We assume the little go, or two per cent on two hundred millions for six months. The gain to a few, and the loss to many, is two millions sterling. It has been caused by the exportation of four or five millions more gold than, according to the present laws of the circulating medium, could be spared without derangement. The tax on their exportation at 2 per cent. would have been one hundred thousand pounds. Therefore, if we must have a tax it is better to pay one hundred thousand pounds directly to the Government than two millions to the moneylenders; and better that the parties concerned in the matter should pay whatever has to be paid than that the public in general should be taxed for their behoof. The Committee of the Commons engaged upon the consideration of the currency laws will never take this simple remedy for the exportation of bullion into their calculation, and yet it would remove the difficulty and the distresses that originate in the working of the bullion law. It would interfere with the current of trade, but not nearly so much as that law which sends the executive into every banker's establishment to count his cash, and one set of his liabilites-not nearly so much as the increase of discounts by one, two, and even three hundred per cent., which sometimes occurs and not so much as their sudden contraction and refusal altogether, for no other reason except the existence and the requirements of the present law. But it would not interfere with the current of trade, unless that current became unprofitable. Trade should balance itself and leave a profit. That profit is the only amount that can be permanently invested anywhere without interfering with the aforesaid current. If, therefore, foreign trading requires from us payments in gold, some influence is requisite like the bridle's bit to keep it on the straight road. The present curb turns the entire team. The curb proposed would deal only with the animal astray, and leave the others to pull along unchecked. Further, we do not believe that the investment of money in foreign loans and railways is trade; and the transmission of bullion from one part of the empire to another should be unchecked. The French Government last year, and the year before, evidently paid a premium for the importation of gold. We do not know the mechanism of the process, but some such proceeding was pursued. It was said to be fraught with ruin to the State, like the dealings of the same concern in corn. However, the State has not been ruined; and the interest of money has been kept under the ebb mark, which it might have been expected to attain. We are not seeking out the best of several systems, but the least mischievous. The bullionists insist upon following vice, and we are looking for the least costly vice in which they can be indulged. Any premium upon the importation of gold, payable whenever the minimum Bank charge for discount reached a danger point, would come out of every person's pocket-but it would be a smaller payment by several millions than that now enacted; and would thus be comparatively a great benefit. Last year the Governments of Britain and France both followed a foolish course, but the latter took the cheaper road to the cheaper folly, and was, therefore the less prodigal of the two. A tax upon absenteeism is justifiable upon strictly political principles, and as the money of many persons is more important than themselves, a tax upon its absenteeism must also be correct; and this small bar upon the way of its going would really be a tax of that sort. The law respecting the notes and the bullion in bank coffers was devised and is preserved, not to effect an apparent, but a concealed purpose. It was made for the sake of its irregularities, and not to preserve regularity. It places all the extra interest over the averages paid by the public into the hands of the moneyocracy. That, however, would be only a few millions now and then-a paltry consideration for millionaires, and therefore it does more. As the screw threads its way into the body and life of society, it reduces the selling price of all securities. The strong can buy when the weak must sell. After a time things get better, and prices get up again. Then the strong may sell when the weak can buy. This is most amusing sport to the boys, and is, of course, death to the frogs; but the boys have gambled in that way for many years now, and have become fat and utterly obese upon the system which they call essential to the convertibility of those inconvertibilities which nobody ever really wants to be convertible. The crisis of 1847 was said to have reduced the value of property by two hundred and fifty millions; and while it cost sufferings to the public that ten years have not cancelled, it placed at least one hundred millions in the pockets of the very rich. Where others lost, they won; and this system of gambling is that regular current of trade with which the gamblers insist that we should not interfere. Those other gamblers who kept betting shops, or who now keep loaded dice for arrant fools, also object to the interference of the police with the regular current of their trade, and no more regularly profitable trade was pursued in the three kingdoms; with the exception perhaps of the professed bullionist business, which we wish to destroy. ever The design has been avowed constantly of reducing the value of goods so as to secure their exportation instead of bullion, when a foreign run for gold was formed. This device has been eminently successful in lowering wages and reducing work, but the restoration of the balance of trade, which it was meant to effect, may be another mat ter. A NATIONAL CIRCULATION. "The balance of trade" is not the thing cu dangered. The balance of investments is the point, for which provision is sought. The manufacturer and operative have an interest in the balance of trade, but if any, it must be indirect and shadowy, in the balance of investments, with the exception of colonial investments, or those in free trade countries, being Turkey, China (in one sense), the land of the Damaras, the Ovambos, and generally of the African tribes. The working men of Britain and Ireland gain nothing by M. Rothschild's investments in Austrian rails and stocks, while they may lose much by Messrs. Baring's proposed investments in Russian railways. What reason exists, therefore, to reduce their wages in order to restore the balance of investments? The cost of that operation should fall upon the parties who have disturbed the balance for their own benefit. The present plan is moreover extremely expensive. It is the reduction of wages, finally of work, over the entire population in order to restore some three or four millions of gold. It resembles the act of the man who set his house on fire that he might have light to search for sixpence. It is so absolutely extravagant that human beings never would have entertained the plan, except as a scheme for procuring cheap goods to themselves—not so much for personal consumption as for sales or speculation. We remember one rich man in the manufacturing districts, and in an extensive spinning trade, but who was reported never to have made anything deserving notice, in his opinion, except during a crisis. Commercial distress is the harvest time of money-lenders, from the highest bill broker down to the minutest pawnbroker, or even the keepers of weepawns. To these interests we add many of the pensioned, salaried, sinecured, classes, in order to find the composition of the party who follow Peel in the reduction of all wages over the country, to recover three or four millions of gold, transmitted from the country for the advantage of a few speculators. The Committee selected from the Commons by the Government to recommend the renewal of the Bank Charter will perform that purpose, and the currency laws will remain as they stand. For distress at home, emigration and the workhouse will be offered as palliatives. Economy will be urged in the public expenditure. The militia will not be exercised this year, because the turn-out would cost a million, and ease the labour market for a time. The military and naval forces will be reduced, because "the moneyocracy" trust to bullion for their defence. They are a demented race, who, for their own gain, would risk the independence and the liberty of their grandchildren. We have suggested simple remedies. Tax the exportation of gold rather than the entire trade of the country; pay a premium from any national fand to restore gold, if we must have it, rather than levy a tax on discounts, and stop employment, throwing men out of wages. Some 133 notion is afforded of the means in gold deemed necessary by the bullionists before the trade of the country can proceed in the "regular way. Twelve to fifteen millions in the Bank give an average, and eighteen millions are prosperity. The Parlia ment, therefore, should buy a pyramid of gold— say of seven to fourteen millions, at the rate of one or two millions per annum, for custody in the tower, and inspection by the curious, along with the crown jewels. The visitors would pay threepence extra for the exhibition of this pyramid of sovereigns, which would be as useful there as in any dark vault of the kingdom. Assurance would be thus afforded that we had a stock of gold in the country equivalent to the theoretical wants of the metallists or mineralogical politicians, and an end would be made to those distressing circumstances caused by embarassing fluctuations in the price of money, which are triennial. We have endeavoured to show the means of neutralising the paramount theory of circulation on its own basis. We do not agree with the fundamentals of that theory; but in circumstances now existing it is useful to see that the essential conditions of a circulation, according to the late Sir Robert Peel and his followers, may be provided without causing that destitution, famine, fever, orphanage, and widowhood which have been traced to the circuitous and costly means by which they worship their idol. The circulating medium should represent the property of the country, or so much thereof as may be requisite for the purpose. It should be payable in either silver or gold, as the persons promising to pay might prefer, and they alone should decide upon the measures necessary to keep their own promises; while the Legislature will do their duty in holding fast property sufficient to meet the circulation, if it be neglected in the usual course. A national circulation payable in taxes is not the Utopian scheme described by its opponents. It is nothing more than the issue of Exchequer bills upon a small scale, and would answer all purposes of circulation, exactly as they meet some of its wants. If the Government made all its payments in its own notes, and these notes were legal tenders for all debts and taxes, we should have a circulating medium for domestic purposes of large amount and obvious solvency. Other schemes for securing a sound circulation have been proposed, and we have no doubt that several of them would answer the end well, but the bullionists are, in power and out of poweractive, clever, and energetic, gaining largely by the popular folly, growing amidst rottenness, and thriving on wrecks. They have the ear of the constituencies, because the electors generally do not think over this topic. The industrial interests bleed while they sleep. Vampires, they say, fan their victims with their wings while drawing their hearts' blood with their fangs. These vampires are illustrations of our cast metal men, who also fan the public into apathy, while living upon the feed the creature to repletion, but the servants proceeds of skill and work. Therefore we propose steal the meat. A tax upon its withdrawal can the plain remedy; let those who want to keep gold prevent that crime. Gold we must have at any in the country pay for its withdrawal for their cost, they say. Then there is no high treason own investments. These high priests of our to political economy in saying- Gold let us modern idolatry tell us that we must feed the keep when we have got it, even at any idol. That would not be difficult. We can cost. TANGLED TALK. "Sir, we had talk."-Dr. Johnson. "Better be an outlaw than not free."-Jean Paul, the Only One. "The honourablest part of talk is to give the occasion; and then to moderate again, and pass to somewhat else."-Lord Bacon. THE PROCRASTINATING WORLD.-WHICH WIG? zle me, I find, among my friends and acquaintances numbers of people who, mixing in society, are totally ignorant of the new postal regulation; some who think the Iudex is sixpence, and (therefore !) do not buy it; some "good subjects" who are totally indifferent to the topic, although the comfort of thousands of their fellow-creatures is concerned in it; and, lastly, some who, with the Index in their hands, mistake the drift and uses of the arrangements to which it is a key! ... Is not this full of instruction and comfort? Let Prophets and Reformers take courage. If the world is so slow and so dense in these simple, everyday concerns, how useless to look for a prompt response in reference to novelties of a higher grade! The world moves like a tortoise"and still it moves!" The procrastinations of individuals are nothing in comparison with the procrastination of society. Her way of dallying shyly with a novelty of any sort for half a century before she at last clutches Briton has been so long complaining of postal delays, (for the most part without the least reason, -only he is the most unreasonable and exacting of mortals when he once gets it into his head that he has paid for anything) that one would imagine a priori that immediately upon the announcement of the new plan and the publication of the guide-at it with a spasm, is a fact in the philosophy of book, he would rush to the post-office round the corner, buy the little Index, and eagerly conform himself in addressing his correspondence to the suggested rules. But what are the facts? Some weeks after the plans had been made public,-long after I had, for practical purposes, mastered the Index, so as to be able almost to dispense with any reference to it in directing my letters,-long after I should have imagined every sane person in the capital would have done the same, as a matter of course, -I see a paragraph in the papers mentioning, as a topic of congratulation, that many thousand copies of the Index have been sold, which is a striking proof of the public interest in the new arrangement, &c., &c. "Public interest"? I should think so, indeed! Has not the "public" been clamouring for quicker delivery of its letters for ever so long? And, now that the boon is at its "discerning "fingers'-ends, what matter for notice can it possibly be that it takes what it has progress to which too little attention has been directed. The history of improvement in theatric accessories would furnish curious illustrations both of the slowness and of the suddenness of progress. One instance occurs to me. In the eighteenth century, even after false hips had been given up by male actors in France, the profusely powdered peruke, for all sorts of characters, was obstinately retained; and it was by what I might call a coup de theatre, that its sacrifice was at last accomplished. Some actor-little known, though his courage deserved a statue-came forward one night in the part of Hercules, determined to try the question of antiquated Wiggery by a practical experiment. On he came, then, with a black, knotted mop of savage-looking curls, befitting the serpent-strangler, on his head, and in his left hand the fitting club. But in his right he bore-a powdered peruke, white and frizzled to the very height of fashion, and, holding it aloft in air, with an inquiring gesture, he thus put to the startled audience the momentous TWO MISTAKES CORRECTED. question of "Which Wig ?" The answer was not long in coming, and it was fatal to the powdery abomination. Hercules flung it away with melodramatic contempt, the audience cheered, and thenceforward the actors on the French stage were free to select, each one, the wig appropriate to his part. Now the Wig question thus suddenly settled in favour of nature had been simmering in the public mind for a long time, and the ultimate boiling over would never have appeared doubtful to any one who could see deep enough. So it is in other cases. Whenever the reformer has a grain of truth on his side, he may be sure there is some sort of "response to his cry" in the minds of others, and that all it wants, in order to finding a voice, is "importunity and opportunity." The world is slow to move-but "still it moves;" and the right wig is sure to be chosen at last. Perhaps and this, not to put too much weight upon a slight thread, shall be my last observation -perhaps the world is so slow to answer the question "which wig ?" at least in a great many cases, because only extreme wigs are proffered to choose from. I remember reading a story of Dean Milner, the Church historian, once going into a barber's shop in the Temple to buy a wig. The shopman said, "Would you like a wig to go a-hunting in, or a wig to go to Court in, sir ?" The Dean answered steruly, "Is there no medium between a hunting wig and a Court wig? I want neither, but a fair, serviceable wig, suitable for all purposes." Now, it is the "serviceable wig, suitable for all purposes," which is your innovator's pons asinorum. TWO MISTAKES CORRECTED. I CLASS together two mistakes which I have noticed in my reading, because they both arise from imperfect appreciation of the simple character of certain impulses or faculties in our common nature. I have just seen for the thousandth time that "So-and-so had that invariable trait of a benevolent man, the love of children." Nothing can be wider of the truth. The love of children is the manifestation of a primitive instinct, quite sui generis, and the most random observation of life should guard against any such fallacia accidentis as the above. Benevolent people are commonly, not always, fond of the young; but those who are fond of the young are not by any means usually benevolent. I have known a case where a woman adopted and cherished a pair of orphan babes, who was otherwise almost destitute of kind impulses. Within this very week, I have conversed with two old acquaintances, both ladies, who are kind and self-sacrificing enough in a general way, but to children totally indifferent. Not only the most bloodthirsty beasts, but the most bloodthirsty savages of the human race, are found capable of the most devoted attachment to their young. How 135 Nor do these rash generalisers manage to miss such well-known facts? Or how do they dispose of them? . . It is indeed difficult to conceive of a benevolent person as otherwise than kind to children, as helpless, and therefore having peculiar claims upon sympathy; but that is quite a different thing from kindness to children as children. could a quick observer mistake one thing for the other. One may be attracted to an object, living or not, by a thousand things apart from a genuine passion for it. Does anybody suppose that when Campbell advertised for the pretty little girl he had seen in the Park, he was actuated by either pure love of children or by pure benevolence? On the other hand, when Shelley fed the ragged little waif with bread and milk like a mother, he was actuated both by kindness and by love of children as children. But it is mistaken moral criticism to explain his conduct by saying that good hearted people are always fond of the young. So It is Archbishop Whateley who furnishes me with the second topic. Speaking of what he calls "Totality (or eusynopticity)" of mind, he says it enables its possessor (among other advantages) to acquire and retain things which can be formed into a system, and, as it were, tied into a bunch. far good. It is of the elucidating comparison that I complain. "In this respect, it (Totality) is like an ear for music (which indeed in its own way may be called a species thereof), for I do not know that those who have an ear retain single sounds better than others; but they are enabled to retain a vast number, by means of their mutual relation in a tune. That their remembrance of a tune is not the collective remembrance of the individual notes, but of their mutual relation, is quite evident from this that if they begin any tune in a higher or lower note than they heard it, they will go all through the same, and thus bring out notes which it is conceivable they never heard in their lives." of Is there anything peculiar in this "totality" of the musical faculty, which makes it especially eligible for comparison? Is not the combining power the manifestation of the higher exercises of every faculty of the human mind (whatever one's metaphysics), as you ascend from simple perception? Is the a of the gamut,-the object of the musical faculty-more defiuable than the the numeration table-the object of the arithmetical faculty? Is it any more a matter of "relation ?" I cannot see it. And I should say precisely the same of the faculty of causation, or of comparison, or of ideation. I apprehend-appealing both to my own consciousness and observation-that it is an error to suppose that musical people do not perceive in single sounds qualities which unmusical people do not. A million men would receive a million different impressions through the ear of the same note of a bell, and each one would remember it differently. A single sound may be musical or unmusical, as we all know. The statement that music depends upon the relations of sounds amounts, I think, to nothing but a truism. Upon what relations? Not upon those of time or succession, for-not to refer to the nations whose music was almost wholly rhythmical, and would not be recognised under that name by uswe all know persons who have the keenest car for the "music" of music, and almost no perception of time or rhythm. The statement, then, comes to this-music lies in the musical relations of sounds! Would not the accurate statement be, Music lies in the musical quality of sounds, (ie., in the which is the object of a certain perception) and a musical composition is a combination of musical sounds, resulting from the musical faculty, joined to other faculties, in a high degree of activity? A musical composition includes-I. Tune. II. Time. III. Rhythm, acceut, or momentum. Let me be understood. I do not deny that the exercise of "totality "is like that of "a good ear"-only, that it is more like that than like the exercise of any other good natural gift-the arithmetician's, the painter's the mechanist's. Combination is the flower and crown of every faculty; but its fundamental action is an ultimate fact not admitting of any such definition as the passage from Whateley seems to imply for music. THE KIND ALTERNATIVE. PEOPLE who keep gardens are all annoyed by the sparrows. What to do? Expatriated the birds cannot be; exterminated they can be. Shoot them, then, or otherwise destroy them. That is the answer which would occur to nearly every mind. But the spirit of her who, "in a basket of Indian woof," carried away into a wood the noxious things from the garden where grew the "sensitive plant" lives yet. The Times contained, not long ago, a letter from which this is an extract : Being rather fond of gardening, I did not, of course, like to see the young shoots of my pinks and other plants carefully picked out. Upon examining the question dispassionately, I came to the conclusion that this depredation on the part of my pugnacious and querulous friends was one of necessity, and that they were compelled to it by hunger. I accordingly applied a remedy which was as efficacious as it was astonishing. It was simply this: Every morning before breakfast I soaked a few hard crusts and stale pieces of bread, and threw them out on the walk in my garden, and gave three distinct whistles. After the first week they understood the signal, and came regularly when I called, and, if I happened to be a little after my time, I found them quietly perched upon the' branches of the trees and shrubs nearest the window, awaiting their daily meal. From that moment I have never had reason to complain of their conduct-not a young shoot or any seeds were touched by them. I have now continued this experiment for upwards of five years, the anything in which a kind heart and cultivated conscience more frequently make themselves known than in the suggestion of "mild alternatives" in repressive measures. One man, stung with a sense of some wrongness in another, seizes the first means that offers, refuses to admit the possibility of any other, and fancies he is embodying Eternal Justice. Another, with a better inspiration, looks anxiously round the whole horizon of circumstances and possibilities, and chooses his remedy upon the immortal principle of doing unto others as he would be done by. Let any one look back upon his past life, and see how often he has failed in his schemes from taking too narrow a survey of his position to see all the alternative courses open to him; how often he has done this when his brain was cool and his hand steady, and no need pressed upon him—and I think he will gather a lesson of caution for all hours of excitement, and especially for hours of indignation, which will make him pause upon the question-"Is there no kind alternative ?" LITERARY HONOURS. It is a common and a just complaint that people who write, and especially people who write poetry, are vulgarly supposed to be several heads superior to the rest of mankind. And the supposition is sometimes answered by saying that there is, perhaps, no more ability required to make a Tennyson than a Rothschild. Perhaps not; but then there is the little question of kind following upon that of degree. Unalterable instincts make people admire supremely, and follow with plaudits (ie., with expressions of their delight, not necessarily with praises in the common sense) the man who can find his way inside their minds, and touch the springs of action-who, in a word, can influence them. Upon the action of these instincts depends a great part of the education of the race, and they must have way. But does the most conceited verse-maker in the world-admitting that poetry is the highest of the arts of expression--does such an one ever dream that he is better or greater than any humble hero behind a cobbler's stall, or heroine of a wash-tub? I hope not. I cannot conceive a pride of penmanship so besotted. Nor does the world at large do much to favour its growth, I think; at least, it is repenting of any past misdeeds of the kind. But exemplarily good people have always commanded the highest homage, and always will, in the minds which give the moral tone to the community. Grace last three in Kensington, where I keep up the custom, Darling ranks before Tennyson; and we all sym although the shady and north-easterly aspect of my garden has forced me to abandon growing any flowers. I have a large pear tree, but I have never discovered any injury done to the fruit by the sparrows. pathise with Arnold for saying of a dull, dutiful pupil-" I would stand to that boy hat in hand." People, then, who command influence through the pen or the tongue, must always be distinguished or admired in proportion to the extent of that influence; but this fact does not suppose any false moral estimate of them in healthy minds. Literary |