tion all the most noted and distinguished authors, he could find, on the subject of pneumatology. He expected, by studying them, to digest a true system. This course he pursued for several years. When he had carefully attended to English, Scotch, French, and German authors, instead of finding increased light, his mind was more darkened and perplexed with respect to several parts of this very important subject. Failing of success in this way, he determined to lay aside reading authors, except occasionally, and make an attempt by an exertion of his own powers, to arrange his thoughts systematically on the principles and operations of the human mind. In this way, he has succeeded, in some good measure, to his own satisfaction.

We do not know when we have had our hopes raised higher than by these remarks. The author seemed to us to view his subject with the eye of a philosopher, and to be resolved on taking the only true route to a perfect mastery of it. It is not a science to be built upon reading. The facts, the materials to be analysed, the instruments of observation and inquiry, every thing in a word that the student wants, lies within himself. This makes out the vast superiority of the science of mind. It is true, previously written treatises on the subject are to be consulted, but it should be, as the enterprising and inquisitive traveller goes to his geography or his map, to compare them with the country through which he journeys and the scenes around him, and to mark how true or how false they are to their original.

We are sorry now to say that we have already given Mr Burton all the praise we can afford him. He has performed little of the promise which he made us so generously in the be ginning. His work is indeed a failure, a total failure, we think. The style, which our brothers of the North American, if we understand them, call extremely uninteresting and bad, seems to us incomparably the best part of it. For it contains a great many crudities, a great many truisms, a great many things which are not true, a great many things we have repeatedly seen better stated before, without any new valuable matter that we have as yet been able to discover. sad falling off this from our high expectations!-We feel like disappointed adventurers, who go to a land where hidden gold is promised, and return pennyless.

A

We will take a little out of the volume now in support of our remarks. In the first place Mr Burton tries to prove that the human mind has faculties. And a faculty he defines to be 66 a preparedness, a fitness, a capacity, or an adaptedness for those various operations of which we are daily conscious." Reflect for a moment, reader. There is an attempt here to

show that the mind is previously fitted and adapted to do what it does continually,-to think, to understand, to will, for example. Mr Burton may state the proposition for himself. "And now the inquiry is whether there is in the mind a faculty or preparedness for thinking, a preparedness for feeling, a preparedness for willing; or whether there is not." An adventurous spirit he, who should take up the affirmative here incautiously. Our author musters almost half a dozen passages of metaphysics in support of it. But this is not near all. Not content with throwing the feeble light of reason on the dark question, he calls in likewise the aid of Revelation. Indeed it rests mainly with him upon Scripture proofs.

God is the author of our being. He is perfectly acquainted with the nature and properties of our minds. He can give us a just description of men. According to his word, men possess three distinct properties or faculties. An understanding, which is the seat of knowledge; the heart, which is the fountain of depravity; and the will, as the cause of all the visible effects wrought by us.

The last time Christ appeared to his disciples after the resurrection, it is said, "then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures." Here the understanding is that faculty, by which his disciples were to obtain a knowledge of the great doctrines of the gospel. By this they would perceive the truth; and become acquainted with the gospel scheme of salvation, and be able to teach it to others. Also Eph. i. 18. "The cyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints." The eyes of the understanding were enlightened, for this purpose, that saints might know, or clearly and distinctly perceive the objects of their hope and desire.

And so on through. We will not contest the point with our author about the existence of the mental faculties; but as a theologian he ought to know that the sacred volume was not given us to explain metaphysics by. The moral reformation of man was its single purpose, and the most familiar language was made use of, because this is the most easy and intelligible, though it may not square exactly with the refined researches of philosophy.

Having thus settled the obscure question, whether the human mind is fitted, or has a capacity, for thinking, understanding, willing, &c.; that is, whether it possesses faculties or not, Mr Burton next proceeds to inquire what these faculties are. And he insists upon it that the understanding, the will, and the heart have this character. The heart is a faculty of the mind!! Memory however he thinks does not

deserve so high a character. He comes to the same conclusion too about conscience.

Now we see, that conscience does perceive; it therefore does not feel. As it perceives, if we call it a faculty, it is the same with the understanding. But of what use is it to have two perceiving faculties? So if we say, it is the nature of conscience to feel, to love and hate; then it cannot perceive. And if its nature is to feel, it is, if a faculty, the same with the heart or taste. And of what use is it to attribute to the mind two feeling faculties?

Here are our author's leading principles on Taste :-" 1st. Taste, like the understanding, is undefinable, being a simple property." "2d. The taste, OR THE HEART, is a feeling facul ty." 3d. Taste is the spring of action in all moral agents." 4th. Taste is a moral faculty. Here is the fountain of all virtue and vice."

But we are tired of this business. We were going to say something of the new meanings which our author gives to the most familiar language, because we think this has been a great source of error and confusion to him throughout his book. An example of it occurs in the quotations we have just now made in the use of the word Taste. The Scriptures, we are told,"call this faculty the heart." The heart is not only a faculty of the mind, but this faculty is the same with the taste!! And Mr Burton seriously professes to use the terms in this sense as often as they may occur in his book. "Whenever I may use the word heart to signify a faculty of the mind, I mean the same thing by it [as] I do by the word

taste."

It is high time for us to stop. We owe it in justice to our author, and certainly to ourselves, to say that we have not had the patience to read this volume through. When we saw in prospect before us the deep questions of moral agency, of liberty and necessity, of the nature of good and evil, of God's foreknowledge and decrees, &c. &c. &c. and observed cursorily how they were handled, sometimes, as it seemed to us, without being understood even in the terms of them by the author himself, our courage gave out and we lay down the book in despair, perhaps it may contain mines which we have not had the talent to touch.

MISCELLANY.

THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

CONSIDERED MORE PARTICULARLY IN THEIR APPLICATION TO THE INDUSTRY AND GENERAL INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES.*

I. WEALTH.

As human wants increase, in the progress of man from his primitive state towards that of civilization, so must his labour for their supply increase with them.

With the increase of his labour, habits of industry are formed, the land is improved, the arts arise and are advanced, production is increased, wealth is accumulated, and each successive generation is thus supplied with additional means of accelerating production and increasing wealth.

Individual wealth is that, whatever it may consist in, which gives the possessor of it, in all places within the sphere of civilization, and at all times, in sickness as well as in health, a command over all objects, whether of necessity or desire, which are of an exchangeable nature.

National wealth is not the aggregate of individual wealth, inasmuch as this in part consists in public and private debt.

But national wealth consists of the aggregate of public, private, and corporate property, so far as this is composed of material things having a real and inherent value, and of property in debts due from abroad: deduct, from the sum total of this aggregate property, the amount of public, corporate, and private debt,

*The following extracts from a letter of our correspondent, accompanying these pieces, will serve to explain the views of their author. "The sheets, which I place in your hands, are designed to supply a deficiency in the books, the continuance of which I have heard many persons lament. What is wanted is a compendious and practical view of the great maxims of political economy, and a view of them suited to the interests of Americans. How far these papers go towards attaining their object, I will not undertake to say; but of this I am sure, that they contain truths, and truths of weighty moment, which are not so universally recognised amongst us as the welfare of the country demands they should be, and which it is here attempted to place in a new light.

"I say, in a new light, and for the following reasons. Whenever these topics have been discussed in European books, it has always been done under the influence of some darling theory, which it was the writer's aim to support, and which coloured all his opinions and reasonings. This theory, also, has usually been deduced from some peculiarity in the writer's situation, or in the condition of his country, leading to conclusions, which might be favourable to his own interest or to his country's interest, but which are not so to ours or to that of our country. It is our misfortune that we are, in America, more than duly prone to regard the writings of certain English politicians and economists as little short of oracular.

"Prevalent as this disposition is, it would be equally just for us to put faith in the flattering picture which Blackstone and other English lawyers draw of the supreme

which the nation owes abroad, and the balance is the amount of national wealth.

Although a portion of individual wealth enters to make up the aggregate of national wealth, namely, that portion which consists in material objects of intrinsic value and of debts due from abroad; yet it does not follow that every accession to individual wealth is an augmentation of national wealth, or that what promotes the interest of an individual must necessarily promote that of the public.

Individual fortune may arise from speculation, or transactions which produce a gain to one from the loss of another, but by which the nation is none the richer.

As the productive industry of the nation is the source of its wealth, transactions and operations which discourage it, however individually profitable, are prejudicial to the public interests; whereas those pursuits, transactions, and operations which encourage and promote industry, are those which are most conducive to the public prosperity and wealth.

II. CAPITAL.

Capital is either fixed or circulating, and is that portion of wealth which is employed by the productive classes in the community, for purposes of income and profit.

The means employed by productive industry in production, consist in land, live stock, rude materials, the powers of nature, and products; and so far as these means are individually appropriated they are collectively called capital.

Property in any of these objects, if unemployed, or only employed for pleasure, is not called capital. It is then, if spoken of in the abstract, called wealth; or if spoken of in respect to its ownership, it is called property simply.

excellence of monarchical institutions; or to think of adopting the counsel, which a late Quarterly Review very soberly gives us, to amend our constitutions by engrafting upon them a king, an order of nobles, and an established religion."

"The object of the pieces before you, then, is to give a plain exposition of economical principles adapted to our interest, not the interest of France, or of Britain, or of the British country gentlemen, or of British stockholders. Suffice it for us to be cautioned from error by European example, and to learn by their fruitful experience, without wishing to acquire wisdom by hazarding our own national welfare. Let their political theories serve as beacon lights, which may guide us into the haven of security, by warning us from, instead of leading us to, the rocks on which they

stand.

"When, furthermore, the principles of political economy have been debated amongst us, it has generally been with reference to some question of public policy then pending, and the disputants have either looked upon it through the medium of their own personal or sectional interest, or they have been affected by theories not adapted to the particular interests or position of our country. But in these papers,

endeavour is made, not to draw individual inferences from preconceived general theories, but to deduce principles from the actual observation of facts:--with what success you will judge."