tenderness of the learned strumpet, his wife, to give her an excuse for declaring him the real as well as the legal father of her child. The sequel has retribution in it: she loses her life in giving birth to the fruits of her adulterous commerce, and Voltaire is overwhelmed with affliction at her death, until, before her interment, he desires LONGCHAMPS to remove from her finger a ring which, inside its cornelian, concealed a small miniature of himself, and might fall into the hands of the Marquis; but St. Lambert, who knew that his likeness had replaced that of Voltaire, had already caused the gem to be removed by LONGCHAMPS. When the secretary communicated the fact to Voltaire, O ciel! dit-il, en levant et joignant les deux mains, voila bien les femmes ! j'en avais ôté Richelieu, Saint-Lambert m'en a expulsé; cela est dans l'ordre, un clou chasse l'autre: ainsi vont les choses de ce monde !' In the sixth and last division of these volumes, the mass of writings concerning Voltaire and his works by Madame du Chatelet and others, there is little worth our notice here, and not much perhaps of any value for the future biographer. It is indeed principally with relation to this kind of value, that we have spoken of these volumes at all. The life of Voltaire yet remains to be written in our language, and the present collection has added very considerably to the abundant materials which we now possess for such a work. The rare and extraordinary talents of the man, the elegant versatility of his genius, the immense number of his works upon such various subjects, and the extraordinary influence of his opinións upon his age and country, would all contribute to invest a good account of his life with very high interest and attraction, to say nothing of the extensive picture which it must embrace of the literature and literary manners of France during the last century. We must confess that we should ardently desire to see such a work properly executed, with impartiality, good sense, and candour; and we are convinced that it can be so executed only in our own country and language. Who among our numerous writers in the department of biography will undertake the adventure?

ART. VIII. Elementos de la Ciencia de Hacienda (Elements of the Science of Finance). Por DON JOSÈ CANGA ARGUELles. Londres. 1825. 8vo. pp. 402.

DON

ON JOSÈ CANGA ARGUELLES enjoyed the hapless distinction of being minister of finance to Ferdinand VII., during a portion of the short period of the constitutional APP. REV. VOL. CVIII.

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government.

government. After the invasion by the French army, and the downfall of the liberties of his country, he was, as a reward for his services, consigned, by order of his grateful master, to a dungeon in the castle of Peniscola: and during his captivity there, dedicated his tedious hours to the composition of this work; which, on his arrival in England, he was induced to revise and send to the press, at the solicitation of his friend, Don Vicente Rocafuerte, secretary to the late envoy from the Mexican Republic. To this he consented, apparently with a twofold intention; first, that he might have an opportunity of vindicating the financial measures pursued by the administration of which he was a member; and, secondly, that by pointing out and descanting upon the causes of the ruin and, bankruptcy of the Spanish treasury, he might warn the New American republics against falling into those errors which had proved so fatal to the mother-country. He has acquitted himself of this task in a way which does him honour: as indeed might have been expected from his well-established character as a statesman of great talents, profoundly acquainted with the history of his country and the nature of his subject.

He has divided his work into four books. In the first, he treats of the nature and elements of public wealth, of the sources from which it springs, and the different causes, which tend either to accelerate or retard its accumulation. In the second, he discusses the nature of public expenses; and in the third and fourth, the various methods employed by different governments to raise subsidies and taxes: concluding with some remarks on the qualities requisite in such agents as dedicate themselves to this necessary and important branch of the public service. He subjoins an appendix, containing various statements and details, to elucidate his reasonings; such as a list of the various positos, or agricultural banks, established in the different provinces of Spain, with an enumeration of the amount of their funds, in seed, corn, and, money; an account of the average quantities of foreign corn imported into Spain; a statement of her mercantile shipping and seamen; a calculation of the losses sustained by Spain in her population, from the atrocities of the Inquisition; an account of the mercantile diplomacy of Spain, exhibiting a variety of useful particulars, connected with her commercial relations with foreign states; a full exposition of the nature of commercial treaties, with an examination of those, which have been entered into, at various times, between Spain and the other European powers; and, lastly, a brief abstract of the work, in the shape of a catechism of finance.

This, it will be perceived, is a very extensive range, and it would require a much larger space than we can well allot to it here, to attempt to follow Senor CANGA through all his details. We shall therefore merely content ourselves with noticing a few of the most striking passages. After laying it down as a well established position, that gold and silver do not constitute national wealth, but that the amount of labour and industry is to be estimated in all our calculations on this head, he illustrates his ideas by comparing the opposite condition of Spain and Great Britain, both as to wealth and population; and draws our attention to this singular fact, that in Spain there are five parts in the population out of six, who are perfectly idle; whereas in England, there are only three out of sixteen who are not employed in industrious habits. Hence Spain, with a population of ten and a half millions, only produces eleven thousand millions of reals of income; whereas Great Britain, with a population of little more than thirteen millions (1815), produced forty-three thousand millions of reals, and yet in point of extent and richness of soil Spain has the advantage over Great Britain.

In advocating the tendency of commercial liberty to diffuse prosperity, he cites, in corroboration of his arguments, the economical history of Spain. Whence it appears, that in the course of the sixteenth century, when Spanish commerce was on a more free footing than at present, the city of San Lucar contained within. its walls six thousand merchants, twenty thousand looms, and one hundred and fifty merchant ships; all of which have since disappeared. Spain at that period possessed also a mercantile navy of three thousand sail of shipping; whereas at the present hour she can barely muster one thousand. In the year 1778, before the free intercourse with America, the value of goods exported thither was seventyfour millions of reals, which, within ten years afterwards, had increased to three hundred millions; and of which, in the year 1788, one hundred and eighteen millions were the produce of Spain. Whereas, before that time, their amount was only twenty-nine millions.

In noticing the dreadful catalogue of miseries which weigh down, at this time, the national resources of his native country, Senor CANGA dwells with much force and feeling on the falling off in her population. Religious opinions, he says, having suggested to mankind that matrimony is incompatible with the sanctity of the priesthood, all that class of men are prevented from contracting marriage; which cause alone hadeprived the Peninsula of an increase of population amounts

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ing

ing to nine millions four hundred and twenty-one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight souls in every century. For taking into calculation that each unmarried man of thirty-five years of age might have had at that age

These two, again, at 25,
And these four at 25,

2 children,

Deducting from which, for deaths under 25,

which is the number each bachelor deprives society of in a century, by taking holy orders.

Then, again, the number of individuals destroyed by the Inquisition of Spain, from the date of its first establishment, till the year 1818, amounted to at least

to

341,021

And, regulating the loss of population by the same sort of calculation commencing from the year 1480, it will amount 60,720,973 Moreover, Rodriguez de Castro, in his precious work, called Bibliotheca Rabbinica, asserts that the number of Jews expelled from Spain amounted to

400,000

70,400,000 600,000

And by the same geometrical progression, we shall find the loss to the state from that source to be And the Moriscoes expelled were So that the total loss of population must amount to the appalling number of two hundred and three millions one hundred and twenty thousand. The number, we suspect, is not a little exaggerated; but, nevertheless, it is certain that the population has been seriously diminished by the causes which have been stated, some of which still operate with unmitigated effect.

In addition to which is to be considered the fatal opinion of attaching to a state of poverty a peculiar value; whereby the Spaniards have been led to connect with idleness in this world the ideas of eternal happiness hereafter, and to look down with contempt on a life of honest industry." The child," says Ward, (in his Proyecto Economico,)" upon observing his mother giving alms to a religious beggar, and at the same time kissing with humility the hand stretched forth to receive it, forms so sublime an idea of a state of poverty, which is thus exalted above labour, that it conceives a degree of disgust and aver

sion to all employment." And by an extension of the same fatal influence one-fifth of the year is wasted in observing religious fasts and festivals; so that a loss of labour ensues, which is fully adequate in amount to the whole taxes of the country, and therefore increases the prices of all the necessaries of life in the same ratio. Another cause of the increase of poverty is the absurd opinion entertained in Spain of the nature of usury, whence the hatred which has been so long felt against the Jews, and which has often been a pretext for many acts of atrocious injustice committed upon them. From the same cause society has been deprived of the use and circulation of an immense mass of real wealth, which has passed from the hands of active individuals into the coffers of the clergy. Lastly, the ridiculous opinion entertained, that there is a degree of infamy attached to the laborious classes of society.. Wherefore, a shoemaker in Spain, instead of making his sons. follow his own handicraft, will rather persuade them to enter a convent, and thinks it one of the most lucky days in his life when he sees them arrayed in the habit of monks, thinking that some portion of that respect is reflected back on himself, which is paid to the sacred profession of which they are members.

Another obstacle to national prosperity presents itself in that hurtful prejudice which has been handed down from age to age, and has even reached the Spaniards of the present day, that all persons employed in business are merely a sort of bondsmen, and that the soldier's occupation can alone be considered noble or honourable, so that both commerce and the arts are held in a contemptible light. Indeed, the military order of Alcantara does not admit under its banners, nor communicate its honours to, any merchants or traffickers, nor to those who have pursued any profession or mechanical art. And the statutes of the order of Escama, created by Don Juan the Second of Castile, condemned to one month's imprisonment, any Cavallero who should hold any intercourse either with a plebeian, merchant, or artisan. All these establishments and prejudices operating forcibly on the minds of a proud and sensitive people, naturally indolent, have tended to root out all spirit of industry, and to render them still more disgusted with labour.

In treating of the natural wealth of Spain, Senor CANGA states its surface to consist of fifteen thousand five and a half square leagues, and one hundred and thirty-six millions of fanegadas of land, of which one hundred and twenty-two millions five hundred thousand are capable of cultivation.

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