positive pleasure in stating the case which is most opposed to his own views with the greatest force and care. And, indeed, it may almost be alleged of him that he has elaborated his opponents' arguments more than his own. The fairness and candour of his mind comes out here in a most forcible light. We frequently differ entirely from Sir Archibald as to his conclusions, but we have never had to look further for the arguments and facts on which we ground our opinions than his own pages. If he gives the bane, he gives the antidote also. We know of no work in the English language in which an earnest Liberal, and decided Freetrader, will find the arguments and facts in support of his views so condensedly, so forcibly, and so clearly expressed, as in this.* To future ages it will represent, as in a mirror, the passions, the views, and the feelings of the time to the present, it presents the most useful summary which we possess of the rise and progress of all the great political parties during the last forty years. We know of no historical writer who gives at such length, and so decidedly, his own views-and we think he carries this to a fault; but at the same time there is none more careful to keep separate his views from his narrative, and to give the reader the means of judging fully of the soundness of his conclusions. He does not mix together his history and his opinions. Both stand side by side; and whilst we accept the one, we may frequently reject the other. What generally characterises Sir Archibald's views is broad sound sense. There is never any difficulty in understanding the foundation on which his opinions rest. We take, for example, his views on the comparative effects of capital on commerce and agriculture, and on the currency-two subjects than which none can be more intricate, and on which nearly all his peculiar opinions rest. On the first his idea is, that the effect of the accumulation of capital in the later stages of society is entirely different when applied to manufactures and when applied to agriculture. The accumulation of capital causes its circulating medium, money, to abound; but whatever is plentiful is cheap: the money price of articles consequently becomes higher in a State which has much capital, than in one which has little. Therefore, did no counterbalancing cause exist, such a State would have to pay a higher money price for its productions than one in which the scarcity of capital made money_rare, and consequently prices low. In regard to manufactures, this counterbalancing cause does exist. The application of capital to machinery, the division of labour, the power of steam, enable production to take place at an infinitely lower price. One man aided by machinery can do as much in a day as fifty men could do without it, and at a hundredth part of the cost. The result is that a wealthy State can always produce manufactures at a much lower rate than a poor one. In agriculture, however, this law does not hold good. Capital applied to production there produces a certain increased result, but at an enhanced, not a reduced price. So that whilst capital applied to manufactures causes enormously increased production at a vastly diminished cost, capital applied to agriculture produces only a moderate increase of produce at a considerable increase of price. Very much the same conclusion has been reached, though from a different point of view, by Mr Mill, when he lays it down as a fundamental law, that increased labour, in any given state of agricul * We would more especially point out the statement of the argument in favour of a return to a Metallic Currency (vol. i. p. 379-386); that in favour of Free-Trade on its first introduction (vol. iii. p. 704-706); that in favour of Catholic Emancipation (vol. iv. p. 160-167); of Reform (vol. iv. p. 305-315); and that in support of Free-Trade in 1841 (vol. vi. p. 436-440); of the Bank Charter Act in 1844 (vol. vii. p. 111-114); and for the repeal of the Corn-Laws in 1845 (vol. vii. p. 176-184). We have sought in vain in any Liberal works relating to the same subjects for an equally candid account of the arguments and views of their Tory or Protectionist opponents. ALISON, vii. 397, 398. tural skill, is attended with a less than proportional increase of produce," and adds,— “No tendency of a like kind exists with respect to manufactured articles. The tendency is in the contrary direction. The larger the scale on which manufacturing operations are carried on, the more cheaply they can in general be performed. Mr Senior has gone the length of enunciating as an inherent law of manufacturing industry, that in it increased production takes place at a smaller cost; while in agricultural industry, increased production takes place at a greater cost. . . The tendency, then, being to a perpetual increase of the productive power of labour in manufactures, while in agriculture and mining there is a conflict between two tendencies, it follows that the exchange values of manufactured articles, compared with the products of agriculture and mines, hare, as population and industry advance, a certain and decided tendency to fall."-(MILL'S Political Economy, vol. ii. pp. 263, 264.) Its tendency is to enable an old and wealthy State to undersell its younger and poorer neighbour in manufactured articles, but to compete with it at a disadvantage in the production of raw material and breadstuffs. On the currency, he thinks, that if a certain amount of money, or the circulating medium, is requisite for the transactions by which a certain amount of commerce is carried on, and if these transactions be doubled, the circulating medium, by which they are carried on, should be doubled also. For if it remains the same, it has to do double work, and therefore becomes twice as valuable. Now this change would be of no consequence were it not for fixed obligations. It is quite the same, as far as the transactions themselves are concerned, whether one guinea does the work of two or not; but it is a very different thing when an immense mass of obligations are entered into at the one period, and come to be discharged at the other-entered into when the guinea will produce only one-half of what it will when they come to be discharged. In this case the weight of all debts is doubled, the value of all annuities increased in the same proportion. The debt-encumbered nation and the debt-encumbered landlord are crushed, but the fundholder and the mortgage-holder prosper. Sir Archibald deduces from this, that what is desirable is that the circulating medium should always bear, as nearly as possible, the same relation to the thing circulated, increasing with its increase, and diminishing with its reduction, thus maintaining always the same real value; and that the only way by which it is possible to attain this, is by a carefully-regulated paper currency, which should be increased in proportion to the increase of real transactions, and contracted according to their diminution. His objection to the Bank Charter Act of 1844 is, that it does just the contrary, by making the circulation of paper dependent upon the retention of gold-the export of every guinea beyond a fixed amount being followed by the drawing in of a note of corresponding value-so that whenever large foreign transactions cause a flow of gold abroad, instead of the currency expanding with its increased work, it is forcibly contracted by an equal amount.* Now with these views we may or we may not agree, but they are evidently founded on a broad basis of good sense, are the result of much careful thought and study, and are supported by a mass of facts worthy of the most careful consideration. There is no historical writer of modern times who has made so large and so important a use of statistics as Sir Archibald. The great importance of this branch of historical science is only now beginning to be understood. Sir Archibald Alison and Mr Buckle are almost the only historical writers we know who have founded large views and great inductions upon it. There can be no doubt that it is an instrument of firstrate power, and when the facts proved by it are exhaustive, they afford a demonstration equally conclusive with a mathematical one. But there is no subject upon which a little knowledge is so dangerous a thing, or in which any one who has not ALISON, ii. 379, 391; and vii. thoroughly mastered the subject in all its bearings is so certain to fall into error. Of this weapon Sir Archibald has a signal command. We have had frequent occasion, upon almost every subject treated of in his long work, to verify his statistics, and we have always found them perfectly accurate. They are taken either from parliamentary papers or the writings of his opponents, and whenever he has had to make an approximation, we have invariably found that he has made one rather under than over the particular point which he has been anxious to establish. We cannot better illustrate Sir Archibald's great knowledge and perfect integrity on this subject, than by noticing an attack which has recently been made upon him. In a late number of the Edinburgh Review is an article, marked not less by malignant personal hostility than by acrimonious party-spite. The writer, an able but ill-informed man, has headed his onslaught and made his cheval de bataille an enormous statistical falsehood, to which he says Sir Archibald has given utterance. He says,― "It is, however, a much more serious accusation against this work that it combines the most elaborate distortion of statistical facts with the reckless assertions of political ignorance. When statistics are made the basis of argument, Sir Archibald continually misquotes them in the interest of his theory. Thus he actually places side by side, as corresponding figures, tables of the declared value of imports with tables of the official value of exports-although the declared value, both of imports and exports, which do not suit his theory, stand side by side in the original. In vol. vii. p. 302, there is a tabular view of imports and exports for the nine years 1841-9; and we will quote the figures for the first and last years as an example : Exports of Export of Brit. & Irish Prod. & Manufacture. 1849 £105,874,000 £25,561,000 £164,539,000 chandise not consumed in this country "If we subtract the re-exported merof imports for consumption to our exfrom the total of imports, the proportion ports is £80,000,000 to £164,000,000, or less than one-half. In place, therefore, of a balance against the country of £42,000,000, there is a balance in its favour of two to one. Such is the vindication of free-trade on the very argument which Sir A. Alison accepts as the criterion of its advantage."-Edinburgh Review, No. 225, p. 120. This is boldly and plainly putthere can be no compromise here. He distinctly states that Sir Archibald has been guilty of falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition, in having deliberately and knowingly declared, to serve a party end, that the balance of trade in the year 1849 was enormously against this country, when in reality it was enormously in its favour. A graver accusation, and one more damnatory to an historian, it was impossible to bring. foundation. Up to the year 1854 it Let us examine this matter to its is impossible to give with perfect accuracy the balance of trade, because that is the first year in which the real or declared values are given for both exports and imports-an approximation only, before that, could be made. Now, how to make this approximation is as good an experimentum crucis as possibly could be had knowledge and the impartiality of wherein to try equally the statistical both the historian and the reviewer. The method pursued by Sir Archibald was this: To subtract the declared value of British exports from the official value of the imports, and give the difference as an approximation to the real balance. The method pursued by the reviewer was to subtract the official value of the imports from that of the exports, and give it as the true balance. The one method in the year 1849 ives a balance against this country $42,278,582, the other one in its 2 F favour of £84,126,000. Now, every one who has made statistics a study knows, that while the official value of the exports (owing to the cheapening effects of capital and machinery on manufactures since the period when the official values were assigned) is considerably more than double their real value, the official value of the imports (from their being chiefly raw material) is about forty per cent below their real value. Sir Archibald evidently thought that this excess of the real over the official value of the imports was about equivalent to the official value of the exports of foreign and colonial merchandise (chiefly raw material). So letting these two balance (that is, omitting any consideration of the exports of foreign and colonial produce on the one side of the account, in consideration of the depreciation contained in the official value of the imports given in the other), he simply deducted the real value of British exports from the official value of the whole imports. An easy and infallible means of testing the amount of truth contained in these two methods exists from the year 1854 the first in which the real or declared value of the whole exports and imports is given. We extract three tables for the four first years after that period from a most able and exhaustive article on this subject in the Press :— TABLE I. True Balance of Trade as shown by the Real and Declared Value of Exports *The declared value of British Exports was given before, but not of Foreign and Colonial Produce till 1854. The real value of the Imports was first given in 1852. TABLE II. Balance of Trade for the under-mentioned Years, according to the TABLE III. Balance of Trade for the under-mentioned Years, according to It thus appears, that while Sir Archibald's approximation for these four years would give a balance of trade against this country of £59,000,000 less than the real balance of £138,000,000, the reviewer's method would convert this adverse bal ance into an enormous balance in her favour of £570,000,000. Such is the result of writing on a subject of which the writer is ignorant. Sir Archibald, ever anxious not to over-state his argument, made an approximation which under-states the truth. The reviewer, eager to serve his party, made one which stated an enormous falsehood. We wish we could say that we thought he did this simply from ignorance. But in the very page of Porter's work to which he refers, and speaking of the very year which he has selected as his example, we find the following passage :— 79,011,105 "The rates of valuation employed for computing the amounts given under the head of official value were fixed in the year 1694, and have not since been altered; so that the sums thus given must not be supposed to give any accurate exhibiimported. This system of valuation has tion of the value of goods exported and been preserved in the public accounts, because it has been supposed to exhibit a correct measure of the comparative quantity of merchandise which has made up the sum of our annual dealings with other countries. The fallacy of the present system will be at once apparent if the amounts given in the official value of imports and exports in any one year are brought into comparison. On the suppohouse valuation, our foreign and colonial trade must long since have proved the ruin of our merchants, since the value assigned to our exports is enormously greater than that givento the imports. To instance the first year of the series in the following table, the loss of the country sition of the correctness of the custom Had the writer in the Edinburgh Review been well acquainted with the subject of statistics, he would have known that the real difficulty of ascertaining the balance of trade now lies, not in fespect to the official values of the exports, which are utterly worthless for that object, but in the difficulty of estimating correctly a certain depreciation which exists both in the "declared" value of the exports and the "real" or computed value of the imports. The exports are entered at the value declared by the exporter, that is, nearly at the cost price; but they will be sold at a considerably higher rate to give him a profit and pay the freight. Therefore a considerably larger sum of money will be received for them than appears in the statistical tables. On the other hand, the imports are valued in the customhouse at a rate considerably under the price at which they have been purchased. For them also, therefore, a larger sum of money will be paid than the tables show. The difference is larger on the side of the exports (where it includes both freight and profit) than on that of the imports (where it is made up of part of the profit only). To estimate it correctly at present is impossible, from the excessive fluctuations in the foreign trade; goods bein times sold at an immense profit, and not unfrequently much below cost in the distant markets. |