classes, and is in fact, that article by a reference to which, the wages of a workman are usually estimated, it has been viewed by that author as possessing, to a great degree, the property of labour, as the measure of the value of all other commodities. Upon this supposition or assumption, he questions the policy of granting bounties upon exportation of corn; because, as such a measure necessarily raises the price of grain and consequently of all other articles, whether of commerce or manufacture, no advantage will accrue to the farmer and land-holder, while a considerable obstacle is thrown in the way of our competition with those foreigners whose corn and wages have not been raised. There can be no doubt that corn, or whatever else is the com'mon vegetable food of the people of any country, must afford a better standard than any other commodity of the real price of labour, and will, consequently, represent with proportionable exactness the value of every thing else; but, on the other hand, it is particularly obvious, that, as corn is imagined to derive this property from labour, it must be deficient in exactness, not only to the same degree that labour is deficient, but even to a much greater degree. With his arguments on this point, all his reasoning against the effects of bounties as an encouragement to agriculture fall to the ground: The policy and practicability of granting bounties on the exportation of grain from this country, in the present state of our corn-markets and commercial relations, form quite a different subject of political reckoning: but, as to the effect of bounties in promoting agricultural enterprize, if the minister should think fit to tax all the other classes of the community for that purpose, there is not the slightest foundation on which to raise a doubt. Carried to a great extent it would, indeed defeat its own object, and by repressing the manufacturing interests, destroy the chief source of agricultural prosperity: the limits, however, are considerably wide, within which the landholder may be enriched at the expense of the consumers, without either thinning their ranks or reducing them to absolute misery. Another point on which Dr. Smith has been opposed by more modern writers, is the distinction between productive and unproductive labour. According to the doctrines of Quesnai and his followers, no labour but that bestowed upon land is productive; because it is the only labour which does any thing more than replace itself, and afford the ordinary profit upon capital whether fixed or circulating. These philosophers inaintained that manufacturers of every class did nothing more than realize or fix in the article which they made, a quantity of labour equal to the price of their maintenance, during the time they were employing in mak ing was ing it, together with the usual profit upon the capital, vested in the materials and instruments which were used by them. A pair of shoes, for example, are worth more than the leather and other materials which compose them, by the exact expense of the workman's maintenance during the time he took to make them, together with the profit of the little capital which is fixed in the simple machinery which he employs. His labour is therefore said, merely to replace itself; that is, the price of it only pays the expense by which it was produced; and the given quantity realized in a pair of shoes will, when disposed of, just enable him to 'realize as much more in another pair. If the labour bestowed upon land produced nothing more than what was sufficient to feed those who laboured upon it, and to yield a suitable return to the owner of the land for the capital which employed in cultivation, such labour would be denominated un productive; inasmuch as at the end of the year the landlord and labourers would be no richer than at the beginning at it, having only gained the ordinary profit of capital, and as much food as will maintain them the following season. But land does yield more than feeds those who cultivate it, and returns the ordinary profits of stock; it yields a surplus with which the landlord purchases comforts and luxuries, employs tradesmen and pays taxes; and, on this account, the French economists denominated the labour and capital laid out on land productive. The practical inferences which they drew from this doctrine were, of course, very much in favour of agriculture; and by arguing with much plausibility that the whole revenue of the state was ultimately paid by the proprietors of land, the economists at once completely overthrew the mercantile system of political science, and the financial views of M, Colbert, the popular and favourite minister of Louis XIV. In refutation of this extravagant opinion it will be enough, as it is not our intention to enter farther into the subject, to allude to the sources of revenue in Great Britain and Holland; the amount of which in both countries, and in the former at this very day, has frequently far exceeded the net rental of the whole landed-property. Dr. Smith was so deeply smitten with the simplicity and' liberal spirit of the French system, that his strictures upon it bear scarcely any marks of his usual penetration and sagacity. He objected to the application of the term unproductive to the whole class of merchants and manufacturers; and yet he fails, we think, in his attempt to point out the characteristics of productive labour. He draws the line considerably lower in the scale than it was marked out by the economists, and admitting all to the rank of productive labourers who fixed or realized their labour in a vendible commodity, he excluded those only whose services pe irished rished at the instant of performance. This latter class was still very numerous, and, although reviewers are not specially pointed out, we suspect they are included in some of the generic descriptions. The sovereign, says he, for example, and all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. In the same class must be ranked some of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous, professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds, players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, &c. The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; and that of the noblest and most useful produces nothing which could purchase or procure an equal quantity of la bour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes at the very instant of its production.” No position in the "Wealth of Nations," has provoked sp much criticism and petulant remark, as this distinction between productive and unproductive labour: and yet no doctrine is more tenable and consistent, when the language in which it is enunciated is employed without change of meaning. By productive labour, Dr. Smith evidently meant that, which keeps up the wealth and capital of the country, and which yields from its protits the revenue by which the expences of the State are defrayed. It is that labour, which, being fixed in a commodity to be sold, is, as it were, stocked and stored up, either to purchase labour, or, which is the same thing, the produce of labour in some other form. Those who have written in opposition to this part of Dr. Smith's work, have extended very considerably the import of the term productive, as applied to human exertion; classing under this head all kinds of labour that minister directly or indirectly to wealth, luxury, private gratification, and public security. In their acceptation of the word, the menial servant, who brushes his master's coat, or rides behind his coach, performs labour as productive as that of the husbandman or shoe-maker; and carrying on a process of reasoning on this new and extended meaning of a technical phrase, they find little difficulty in establishing conclusions in opposition to those of Dr. Smith. If by national wealth be meant a well-cooked dinner, well-cleaned boots, or the hearing of a song, then without doubt ought menial servants to be classed with productive labourers; and the man who keeps a hundred servants, is particularly nice about his eating and dressing, and hears all the Italians, male and female, who warble at the Opera-house, must contribute greatly to the strength and prosperity of his country. We shall say, however, that these things rather indicate wealth than produce it; and going on the obvious principle, that national felicity is the sum total of individual felicity, shall admit that these ministers of luxury promote the happiness of the whole, by affording enjoyinent to the few, still we will thank Mr. Craig, Lord Lauderdale, and the Edinburgh Reviewers to inform us, in what sense their labours add to public wealth, the sole object to which Dr. Smith directed his arguments. He never denied that the services of the domestic, and the declamation of the player, have their yalue, and deserve their reward as well as the labour of the artizan; and, taking wealth in the extended meaning of his opponents, he would readily have admitted, that such exertions make an addition to it, that is, to the means of enjoyment or relaxation which are provided for the community. He merely asserted, that the various classes of men whom he enumerated, were not productive labourers, so far as their exertions respected that employment of the national capital, which creates a demand for industry, aud affords by its profits a revenue to the State. We do not maintain that Smith drew the line of distinction exactly where labour ceases to be productive of public advantage, or that all his illustrations are completely unexceptionable; but we certainly do maintain, that the writers to whom we have alluded treat the author and his argument with equal unfairness, in almost all the conclusions which they have marshalled against this portion of his work. The speculations of the economists, like the speculations of all political writers who have a favourite object to secure, are carried considerably beyond their legitimate bearing; and are attended, as we have already observed, with the very absurd corollary, that land defrays all the expences of the State, and affords the revenue upon which the whole people is subsisted. The various classes of manufacturers and artists are regarded as producing nothing more by their labour and ingenuity than the price of their maintenance during the time that their labour and ingenuity were exercised;-all their exertions are pronounced to be sterile and unproductive, and incapable of adding any thing to national wealth. Whatever riches a workman may acquire, are represented, by this system, as just so much drawn from the cultivators of land and consequently in proportion to his opulence, a degree of poverty has been created somewhere else. In short, all the other classes of men are useful merely as they consume the surplus produce of the soil, and pay for it with the labour or skill which they fix in the cloaths, shoes, and other comforts, which the farmer has occasion for; much in the same way that a cow is useful, which repays with her milk the grass and hay that she consumes during the year. : Mr. Mr. Craig opposes the doctrines of the Economists with much sound reasoning; but it is impossible to quote any part of his section on this subject, without materially injuring the whole, and weakening the force of every particular argument. Indeed our author has some reason to find fault with us, both for exhibiting his opinions in our own language, and also for dwelling chiefly on such parts of his work as are least entitled to praise. Perhaps, however, it will not mend the matter to say, that as those portions of his book which are most original, are also the farthest removed from the ordinary sentiments of mankind, we could not bring forward what we regarded as peculiarly his own, without the clumsy appendage of our observations, by way of check and caution. We allude chiefly to his notions on criminal jurisprudence. As to the rest, we have not the least hesitation in recommending these Elements of Political Science as a useful book for students in that most important branch of human knowledge: the doctrines are those which are generally approved and acted upon in this free and enlightened country: the discussions which pervade it are liberal and manly, and the style is correct, perspicuous, and sometimes truly eloquent. ART. III. Specimens of the Classic Poets, from Homer to Tryphiodorus. By C. A. Elton. 3 vols. 8vo. 11. 16s. Baldwin. 1814. TRANSLATION from dead languages must be admitted to be a task of great difficulty. Even our best prose translators, however faithful to the text, and imbued with the spirit of their originals, can scarcely be said to compensate the English reader for his ignorance, not merely of classical Greek and Latin, but of those inexpressible beauties and stubborn idioms which disdain the fetters of any other tongue. Can any one have a full conception of Demosthenes, Tacitus, or Pliny, who reads them only in the versions of Leland, Murphy, and Melmoth? But in poetry the difficulty becomes incomparably greater the barriers which divide the territories of ancient and modern song appear almost insurmountable. In almost every instance, the powers of genius have failed, when the poet of one age has attempted to give a true portrait of the poet of another. We must have a Jikeness, and more than a likeness: the peculiar traits which marked the original, must be at once accurately and forcibly renewed: the air and attitude must be all strictly preserved: the features, countenance, and expression which he wore, must " be |