Perry's whole book, lessening the work of even the best portions. Thus the chapter on Currency, which is sound and able in almost every other respect, nowhere states distinctly what Mr. Mill calls "the most elementary proposition in the theory of currency," that

66

'an increase of the quantity of money raises prices;" or this other, that "the value of money is inversely as its quantity multiplied by what is called the rapidity of circulation." Much of the reasoning is given upon which these laws rest, and exceedingly well given; and the laws are at times taken for granted, but they are nowhere distinctly stated. The principal part of the chapter, we have already said (as well as that one upon credit), is very satisfactory. Mr. Perry argues very cogently against the whole theory of paper money; and calls attention—although less distinctly than we wish he had done to the broad distinction between the proper sphere of credit, and that of currency. The legitimate function of credit is to transfer capital to hands which can use it more efficiently: it is not its proper function to create capital; and, if it ever appears actually to create wealth (by issues of currency, for instance), it is only a deceptive show, for the fictitious capital thus created will lower the value of the currency already existing, so that the sum total of wealth will be no greater than before. The experience through which our nation is now passing is rapidly disgusting the community with every form of that credit currency which it has been found so impossible to preserve from the grossest abuses.

Many parts of the chapter on Foreign Trade are very good; but those paragraphs which attempt to illustrate the course of international trade by figures are in Professor Perry's worst style. We confess, after much study, that we cannot understand his calculations; and that, too, after Mill's admirably clear exposition of the same subject. We protest against his practice, after the manner of the advocates of Free Trade, and of Protection also, of accusing his opponents of cheating and selfishness; and against the arrogant tone in which this discussion is always carried on. There are as sincere advocates and as insincere of the one theory as of the other. We do not see how it is possible to answer the Free-Trade argument on purely economical grounds, where the question is of immediate advantage. But when Mr. Perry (p. 424) assumes, "for argument's sake, what would be folly to concede in reality, that it is desirable for the public to encourage a presently unprofitable business," he is coolly begging the whole question at issue. It is just upon this principle that the argument for

a pres

protection rests,—that it may be well sometimes to carry on ently unprofitable business," for the sake of an ulterior gain; a proposition which we say would be folly to deny, if we were not afraid of seeming arrogant in our turn. Conceding this, and conceding that a varied industry is desirable in any community, there remains only one more proposition to be proved, to demonstrate the doctrine of protection,that protection is the only, or the best, means of developing this varied industry. Mr. Perry, like most free-traders, argues as if there was no obstacle to the establishment of any branch of industry, at any time and place; he ignores the unquestionable fact, that a new branch of manufactures is always at a disadvantage for a while. But Mr. Mill candidly admits this fact, and concedes that protective duties may be defensible "when they are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation), in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country." This concedes all that any reasonable protectionist ought to demand in theory; in practice, we fear that no government, but an "enlightened despotism," would ever succeed in laying such duties justly and judiciously, and in removing them just as soon as the industry was sufficiently developed to make this desirable. The colony of Victoria has just made this very experiment. It began with moderate and temporary protective duties, on Mill's principle; but it has been found impossible to lighten or remove them as manufactures became established, and now the battle is waged there between the two parties, as fiercely as ever it was between Whigs and Democrats.

In pointing out the defects of the work before us, we would not fail to do justice to its many merits. It is a welcome contribution to the discussion, and aid to the enforcement, of those great economical principles, a right comprehension of which is now the most pressing want of the nation. It will be read where a more severely scientific treatise would not be, and cannot fail to do service in the cause of economic prosperity and national progress.

W. F. A.

WHEN a man of genius and of the finest moral feeling falls into a way of saying things dictatorial, extravagant, and unjust, one is apt to feel more irritation than the case warrants, and give judgment with an emphasis sharpened by a sense of personal injury. So many of Mr. Ruskin's later utterances have given pain to those who have owed to him, in other days, their best instruction and delight, that his best friends find themselves turning cool apologists, and average critics find

room for only anger and blame, or perhaps contempt. It is with great regret that we have perceived this altered tone towards a name claiming so much of real gratitude and admiration, a tone certainly not softened by the last essay of his pen,* in which he appears more wilful, more extravagant, more unjust, than ever. He has nowhere challenged more wantonly than here the ordinary opinions and political hopes of man; or been more wildly unpractical than in these latest dreams of social regeneration; or more wilfully assailed an eminent and pure reputation, than in his criticism of Mr. Mill; or more arrogantly paraded an offensive contempt of others' moral judgments, than in what he says now, quite needlessly, of the American character and the case of Governor Eyre; or shown a more lamentable despair of mankind, than when, as now, he rates Mr. Carlyle's cynicism as only too hopeful and serene. These are the symptoms of a nervous and sickly mood into which he has fallen in these later years; and they take a prominence in his own mind as well as with his critics- quite beyond what they deserve. They make easy butts of attack; and his temperament is such as rather to crave than shun attack. They make the sharp points on which one impinges in skimming the surface of his thought, and so furnish the cheap and easy game of his reviewers.

We reckon it a misfortune, because it gives an excuse for slighting some of the very finest and noblest ethics that have ever been uttered; because it blunts the sense to some of the keenest criticism on the real sins and sorrows of our time; because it affords a base pretext for contemning the counsel of a man who speaks in sadder earnest than any of the professed religious teachers of the day. The fantastic names which he has chosen to disguise the sting of his brief, pungent treatises, have also had the effect to confirm a prejudice against the soundness, or even the sincerity, of his thought. And a mind less in earnest than his own is apt to be only annoyed or made angry at the intense gravity of his assurance, that his lessons of chief value to the world are precisely these tirades on topics of political economy. Forget the prejudice and the irritation, let all the eccentric judgments be passed over as of no more account than if they were in Eschylus or Plato, and there yet remains a body of earnest, passionate conviction, - the passion and the poetry of modern social ethics, as we might call it, —

Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne. Twenty-five Letters to a Workingman of Sunderland, on the Laws of Work. By JOHN RUSKIN. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 18mo, pp. 199.

which will remain valuable and true as long as the morals of the Christian gospel retain their meaning.

It has been curious to trace the change in the tone of Mr. Ruskin's language on matters of religious opinion, from what seemed, in his earlier writings, a strict, somewhat stern orthodoxy, and reverence for the letter, mingling here and there in his fervent nature-worship and glowing homage of art; to the extraordinary courage, frankness, and freedom of "Unto this Last," and the more than Stoic nobleness of the preface to "The Crown of Wild Olive." Like most of those whose personal moods jar violently against the actual miseries of the world, and the sophistries that palliate them, Mr. Ruskin's ethics take the form of an intensely idealizing judgment of human society and institutions. Striking out, so to speak, in empty space, and building his castles in the air, he easily fashions to himself the image of a noble State, busy, contented, prosperous, and not too crowded, with an aristocracy using its privilege for pure beneficence, with an artisan class neither crushed by hopeless poverty, nor brutalized in ignorance, nor restlessly crowding to be each man better than his neighbor. It is wholesome and good, we hold, to look upon such visions; and Mr. Ruskin's wealth of rhetoric, and his passionate glow of conviction, far outweigh that dogmatism of assertion, and that asperity of judgment, by which he challenges the animosity of a world he would instruct.

J. H. A.

ALTHOUGH the author of "The Turk and the Greek"* makes no pretensions of remarkable ability, and exhibits himself neither as hero, philosopher, saint, poet, nor even word-painter, his book is pleasant for its very simplicity. His views of the great changes silently coming over the Ottoman Empire are not overdrawn; some out-of-the-way spots, like the island of Scio, he helps one to be at home in; enjoying the familiarity with native languages of one born in the Levant, which few travellers attempt to obtain, his observations are unspeakably more valuable than the paltry gossip of dragomen, which fills too many books of Oriental travel.

Mr. Benjamin presents, none too vividly, the incessant, inevitable, omnipresent decay of the Ottoman empire, accelerated so immensely by the concessions following the Crimean war. On the occasion of a

* The Turk and the Greek. By S. G. W. BENJAMIN. New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1867.

late conflagration of three thousand houses at Constantinople, the government secularized all the mosque property within the burnt district, a stride in reform like Henry the Eighth's sequestration of monastery land in England; and even more interesting, as a type of the decay of Moslem fanaticism, pointing to the overthrow of the effete despotism it has vitalized so long. Constantinople itself Mr. Benjamin represents as showing the exhaustion of the Ottoman race in contact with the corroding luxury of a great capital. The American missionaries receive earnest commendation from one who associates their effort with that revered father to whom his book is dedicated. And certainly, by printing and getting into use an immense number of schoolbooks, patterned after the American, they are preparing a better future for Turkey than it now dreams of; and, by the abolition of the penalty of death upon Christian conversion, they are at liberty now to make direct effort for the propagation of faith. Unhappily, the stupidity, servility, superstition of the Greek Church forbid it from rendering any help in christianizing Mohammedanism. Greece herself has made some progress in beautifying Athens and extending education. But the Church has embarrassed every other effort by its frequent holy days, its substitution of mummery for morality, the contented stupidity of its clergy, and the medieval bondage it maintains over popular thought.

The Greek Church rendered unspeakable service in the past, by furnishing a bond of union to a scattered, despised, persecuted, seemingly helpless race, and rousing them to struggle for freedom through their seven-years' war. But since the revolution it has rested like a tombstone on the people's heart, making freedom of conscience more dangerous in Athens than in Smyrna, smiling upon the luxurious apathy of King Otho, and thwarting the new-born restlessness of a nation starting into life.

F. W. H.

NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

Sermons by Rev. Newman Hall, D.D., of London; with a History of Surrey Chapel and its Institutions. New York: Sheldon & Co. pp. 309. (These are discourses and addresses, many of them occasional, delivered during the author's visit in America last year. They are followed by a few brief religious poems.)

American Edition of Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Part XI. pp. 11211232. Idol-Jehonadab. New York: Hurd & Houghton.