the highest credit on the King's Government. A most humane and successful endeavor had been made by the agent of the Australian Company to conciliate the original natives of that part of New South Wales, who had been described by travellers to have been the most savage race on the face of the earth. Through kindness and good treatment, however, many of those savages had become partially enlightened, and a considerable alteration for the better had taken place in their manners and behavior-a fact that conveyed in a forcible manner this cheering truth, that kindness, and kindness alone, would do much good. With respect to the charges of the hon. baronet, he (Mr. Smith) could only say that in public or in private he would be happy to meet him, in order to convince the hon. member that his information regarding the affairs of the Australian Company was quite incorrect.

Sir CHARLES FORBES explained. He obtained his information from a quarter totally unconnected with the source to which the hon. member (Mr. Smith) seemed to refer.

Mr. W. HORTON begged to say, in answer to the observations of the hon. baronet (Sir C. Forbes), in which he was pleased to term the Australian Company a job incautiously undertaken by His Majesty's Government, that the imputations and allegations of the hon. baronet were alike unfounded; and if the hon. baronet placed much dependence, as he seemed to do, on the source from which he drew his information, he (Mr. Horton) would advise him to renounce as soon as possible all future expectations of truth and accuracy from the same quarter. The hon. baronet spoke of monopoly, but the land of the company lay where there were a million of other acres around it. The hon. and worthy baronet had been pleased to term, the whole proceedings a job; although of this very company, formed as it was at the Colonial Department, not one single share had ever been in the hands of any one of the persons connected with that department.

Mr. HART DAVIS was of opinion that the Australian Company was likely to effect the greatest good; and with regard to the number of shares, the twenty-four directors of the company held more now than when the undertaking was first formed.

Mr. TAYLOR made a few observations, which were inaudible in the gallery.

Mr. Alderman WAITHMAN said he should not detain the house by a reply. With respect to the amendment, he had no objections to it; and the right hon. gent. (Mr. Canning) would do him the justice to say that he had given him a copy of his motion, with a request that he would state whether he objected to it. He could not have drawn up his motion in the form in which the amendment was drawn up. The motion, he thought, might be brought

forward with propriety at some future time. There did not appear to be any material objection offered to it, except that some hon. members conceived it implied a general accusation against all jointstock companies. No man could surely think that he was so wild as to entertain such an opinion, or believe that he thought joint-stock companies were not in some cases useful. He (the hon. member) never meant any thing of that sort. He was not adverse to great mercantile institutions; but his motion was directed against those schemes which went to rob persons of their capital. With respect to the Equitable Loan Company, he had all the facts and circumstances before him from the documents before the House of Lords. Another hon. gentleman (Mr. Attwood) had gone into a variety of subjects; in short, into almost every subject but that which was before the house: although that hon. member had possessed more experience on this subject than perhaps any other member in the house; though he did not mean to say he had been concerned in any case of delusion. He had been the auditor of the company, although he had strangely overlooked all the circumstances respecting this company, as well as of some others. He (the hon. alderman) had been accused of being too vague and general; but instead of wide and sweeping observations, he had confined himself to facts; one was that the company held out that the directors held 300 shares a-piece, which they altered, without any public notice, to 20 shares. He would ask the hon. gentleman (Mr. Attwood) as an auditor of this company, with forty-five directors, seventeen of whom were members of Parliament, whether they did not libel an individual who opposed the company, whether the money for the insertion of that libel in a public journal was not paid for by a check subscribed by three of the directors, and whether that check was not paid by the house of the hon. member who was auditor of the company? There was one of the wickedest libels published against a young man, a pawnbroker, and they acknowleged the publication of the libel. In the committee of the house, the parties opposing the bill wished to prove that it was not a public bill; the company refused this, yet afterwards struck out the title, and acknowleged it was not a public bill. He (the hon. alderman) pledged himself to prove all these facts, and he would ask what security there was for trade, what tradesman could carry on his concerns amid such transactions? The company were professedly pawnbrokers; but they got inserted into their bill a clause enabling them to carry on trade as factors, merchants, and traders, to any extent and any where, and they gave no security that they would carry on the business of pawnbrokers. The company had spent a vast sum of money in advertisements; he had seen a bill for 394/. for adver

tisements, yet this fact had never been published except in the Brighton Herald, and when interrogated on the subject before the House of Lords, they said some of their agents had published it without their authority.

The original motion was then negatived, and the amendment agreed to without a division.

The following members were then nominated of the select commitee, with power to send for persons, papers, and records; five to be a quorum :·

Mr. Ald. Waithman
Lord Althorp

Mr. Ward

Mr. H. Twiss

Mr. George Lamb
Mr. Warburton

Sir Thomas D. Acland
Mr. Charles Ross

Mr. Hobhouse

Mr. W. Lockhart
Mr. Pallmer
Mr. N. Calvert

Mr. Robert Grant

Mr. C. Bankes
Mr. Fazakerley
Lord Ashley

Mr. W. W. Whitmore
Colonel Trench
Sir R. Vyvyan
Major Maberly
Mr. Stuart Wortley
Mr. Dickinson

Sir James Graham.

END OF NO. LIII.

ON

RENT, TITHES, &c.

CONTAINING AN EXAMINATION OF MR. RICARDO'S THEORY OF RENT AND OF THE ARGUMENTS BROUGHT AGAINST THE CONCLUSION THAT TITHES AND TAXES ON THE LAND ARE PAID BY THE LANDLORDS, THE DOCTRINE OF THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A GENERAL GLUT, AND OTHER PROPOSITIONS OF THE MODERN SCHOOL. WITH AN INQUIRY INTO THE COMPARATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF TAXES ON AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURED PRODUCE.

Being in the form of a Review of the Third Edition of Mr. Mill's Elements of Political Economy.

By a Member of the University of Cambridge.1

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:-1826.

THE public can have no just cause of apprehension from political economy; but a great deal from bad political economy, which is in fact no political economy at all. What it is of importance therefore to promote, is the direction of the same rigid processes to this science, that have been extended to the earlier and more forward branches of human knowledge. The discoveries already made have been so striking, that the coming age is probably destined to witness as great a determination of interest to this quarter, as took place towards natural philosophy in the period which followed the discoveries of Kepler and of Newton. And in reality the subject is only another branch of the philosophy of natural phenomena, and to be pursued by the same rules as any of the others. For no reason can be given why the connexion, for example, between the demand for a given substance and the supply, should not be as legitimate an object of philosophical examination, as the connexion between two bodies at the ends of a lever, or between two substances which exercise a chemical action upon each other.

If the English universities, which have always been in a great measure the depositories of knowledge in other branches of physical inquiry, have been too little sensible of the degree in which T. Perronet Thompson, Queen's Coll.

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VOL XXVII.

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NO. LIV. U

the interests of science are concerned in this class of subjects, it is only the more necessary that they should be excited to a consciousness of the reality. And if it further happens, that their particular interests are, to say the least, as much concerned as those of any other part of the community, the truth is not less the truth because the defender is injured by the error. Should they, therefore, suffer from the effects of fallacies such as men of very moderate rank among their pupils would take off if presented in the schools, they can only blame their own supineness for whatever may be the possible result. If the faulty conclusion had related to tides or to telescopes, they would have opposed it by the dissemination of a counter-version of the truth. But because it relates to a tax or a tithe, it is treated as if it had no possible connexion with "a succession of able men in church or state," and was devoid of all relation to "sound learning and religious education."

The same class of writers whose political economy is the most suspicious, have been unsparing in their invectives against academical institutions, and have at least done all in their power to provoke them to a salutary jealousy. Many of the accusers were members of the universities, who having themselves carried little away, had a certain excuse for feeling no gratitude. gratitude. Others there were of a rarer sort, who declared, that after having won learning to be their bride, they had found her all barrenness ;-nothing reflecting, how different is the conclusion of the public in such cases, from that which the complainant would suggest. One of the leading charges against the universities has been, that they do not turn their learning to a substantial use. There is at all events one use to which it might advantageously be turned ; which is, the examination of the theories of their assailants.

The object of this article is to bring the opinions of what has denominated itself "the new school of political economy," to the test of something like such an examination as is continually undergone by every theory which makes part of the system of education in an English university. And for this purpose a work has been selected, which is the acknowledged epitome of the opimions in question, with the latest corrections and additions.

The account given of Capital would have been clearer, if it had begun with the definition. Capital, is wealth employed in the production of other wealth. After this, the elucidation of particular points is easy."

But it is on arriving at the subject of Rent, that the disputed matter commences. Much as the assertion may move of anger or contempt, the celebrated Theory of Rent is founded on a fallacy. The easiest way of proceeding to show this, will be by giving the