throughout England, as far as his clothes are thus made dearer, bears his proportion of the tax. If we pass on to the other supposition, the case in regard to agricultural machinery is just the same, only changing names. It is more important, as it relates to the great article of subsistence, and must affect directly the price of corn. The cheapness which is induced by the additional facility of production by means of agricultural machines, is, of course, a vast blessing to the rest of the community. But it is objected on behalf of the agricultural labourer, that his wages may thus be lessened, or himself for a while thrown out of employment. Under these circumstances, the corresponding fall of price on the portion of corn which he may personally consume, might seem to be a very inadequate compensation. In supposed consistency with his interests, he burns the thrashing-machine, and has doubts whether he shall not also pull to pieces the plough. Corn in consequence rises. But his purpose is answered, supposing, by increase of wages or employment, he is individually better off. Now, how has he attained this personal advantage? By transferring the charge of it to his neighbours,-among others, to the whole manufacturing population, who have to pay dearer for their corn. The question which we would put to these two great classes is this,-Would it not be better for them both to let each, in his character of consumer, get their respective articles as cheap as that article can be supplied? If the operative undertakes to leave the power-loom standing, and so gives the agricultural labourer the benefit of cheap clothes, the agricultural labourer must, in return, consent to keep his hands from off the plough, except along the furrow, and thus ensure, as far as he is concerned, to the operative, the blessing of cheap corn.

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We were startled again, at p. 81 of the Hill and the Valley,' by mischievous declamations, far more worthy of the poet of the "Deserted Village,' than of the poet of Political Economy. Lear's cry of Take physic, pomp,' and Thomson's appeal to the gay, licentious proud,' are much truer, both in philosophy and fact, than the dogma, that additional thought on the part of the great would secure a more just gradation of ranks,' and leave society no starving paupers on the steps of a palace.' This proposition, one should think, would puzzle the writer of the summary affixed to the eighth story. We are sure that it must puzzle a reader of that summary to anticipate the method by which rich philanthropists, made fully aware of the sources and responsibilities of wealth, can speed our entering in upon this promised land. No possible reconstruction of our institutions, and no imaginable quantity of thought on the part of the great, can prevent there being hungry persons to lean on frosty area-rails.' Would to

God the contrary were within any horizon, which the most san, guine can foresee! The Americans have an unbroken world before them. They take an honest pride in impressing on their legislation the character of a stirring popular opinion, and of a paramount jealousy in favour of the interests of the poor. The tax-gatherer has almost disappeared; and their government is administered with a parsimony bordering upon excess, for it beggars their public servants. Miss Martineau may learn from Mr Owen, or from any of our parish paupers, whom the disappointment of exaggerated expectations has returned home again, that New York is not the Fairyland of which now and then she seems to be dreaming. If not, where else will she find or make it? She shall repay Mr Owen for his fact, by showing him the absurdity of his project to do away with the difficulty, by substituting co-operation' for 'competition.'

Capital tells most in large masses. In illustration of this truth, the scene of the third story is laid in Brooke Farm,' a village on the eve of an enclosure. Among the sketches there are some as clear as Crabbe's, some as elegant as Goldsmith's, and others as touching almost as those of Cowper. The doubts of the Milliner, and of Gray in his Cabin Cottage,-the ballads of Carey the barber, the harangues of Webster, and the other guides of 'public opinion,' to the cow-keepers,-the conversations under the elm against the avarice of Sir H. Withers the Parliament squire, and Mr Malton the big farmer,-the discussion concerning the various sorts of prejudiced opposition through which different countries have to pass at different stages of civilisation, (whether it be in draining the fens of Lincolnshire, in laying Sutherland down to pasture, or in planting a waste,)-all connect very suitably with, and powerfully enforce, the main subject of the story. The general answer, which is comprised in the improved condition of the village, is followed out into a variety of details. Mrs Johnson's dairy grows before our eyes. There are smarter bonnets in the milliner's shop window. Norton's decay from the vain desire of holding more land than he had capital to cultivate, is put in contrast with Mr Malton's gradual progress from a farm of six hundred to a farm of some thousand acres on the one hand, and with Gray's cotter-advance to competence by cautious and laborious savings on the other. The happy harvest-field makes up to us for the lost cow-rights on the common; and Joe's village school is a welcome substitute for the children playing among the furze. We have no quarrel with her Sergeant Rayner, the Chelsea-pensioner-looking friend of the whole village, who has picked up his political economy on foreign service, and brought away a hatred of war from the hospital reflections

of a wounded soldier. But what we cannot help quarrelling with, is the precipitancy of a statement like that at p. 122. The statement, as far as we can understand it, is apparently in logical inconsistence with her principal argument, in statistical contradiction to the fact, and in ignorance of the real nature of the English law;-a law, nevertheless, which Joe and Rayner, the travelled servant and the travelled sergeant, are so ready emphatically to condemn.

Miss Martineau informs us that the agriculture of England is injured by the overgrown size of far too many of our estates, and that this is owing to the law of primogeniture. Suppose it to be true that there is a tendency in England for property to accumulate in great masses, yet, according to the text, capital acts more productively in great masses than in small ones. Nevertheless, as every thing in political economy depends upon proportions, we readily admit that these masses may become too great. Still, a particular exception, in which an excess is supposed to exist, can be only reconciled with the truth of the general rule, by drawing somewhere a tangible line; or at least laying down some criterion at which it may be pronounced that the excess begins. If the line which Miss Martineau would draw is that beyond which the management and the capital of a single family cannot reach, the difficulty of fixing and applying this line in practice is evident from the fact, that we should join issue with her at once, on the very example (the example of England) to which she has appealed. Again, if she allows that the best collateral criterion, which the case admits, is one derived from the unfettered exercise of the feelings and experience of parents in each individual instance, (and, vague as it may seem, we think that it is the best,) Miss Martineau will find, on enquiry, that this is in truth the course which the law of England has pursued. But first, what is the actual state of Scotch and English cultivation? Is there, in this respect, among ourselves, at present, any symptom of the existence of the mischief, which is properly described as being a serious disadvantage, whenever estates are so swoln and unmanageable as to produce it? The question is a question of fact. Other circumstances might affect a comparison between the agriculture of England and that of foreign countries. But let us compare the state of the large properties in England with that of the middling-sized ones. We need not travel out of Miss Martineau's own county. Has the rest of the property of Mr Coke suffered from the splendour of Holkham? Are his farms behind hand those of the humbler squirearchy of the provinces? Will it be found that the estates of the Duke of Bedford, or of the aristocracy in general, are less improved than those of our com

mon country gentlemen,-whose patrimony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is as far inferior to that of her model, Sir H. Withers, as their farms are smaller than that of her favourite, Mr Malton? Few English proprietors own such an extent, and few English farmers occupy so largely, as the imaginary heroes of the story, which is thus forced out of its line for the purpose of incidentally reproving them. Besides, the size of estates and the size of farms have no necessary connexion. The latter is determined by independent considerations. The agricultural condition of England and of Scotland proves that the objection of there being far too many estates in this kingdom, too large to be properly managed by the care of one man, or by the re' produceable capital of one family,' may be fully met by the interposition of good stewards and substantial tenants. We deny, therefore, that in point of fact the evil specified-namely, that estates are left comparatively unproductive, on account of their size-exists in England.

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But, suppose that the estates in England are larger in some instances than is desirable, in the next place we deny that the 'meddling of the law' can be made accountable for the grievance. A medium between (116) the extreme subdivisions by which the land is broken up into patches, as in Languedoc, and (number 6, p. 47-54) a concentration of property, like that by which the entire soil of Roman Italy got into the hands of a few great proprietors, is undoubtedly to be preferred to either of these extremes. A law, enforcing partition amongst all the children, or giving the entirety to the eldest, might be fairly charged with a creation of the respective mischiefs. As long, however, as the law does neither the one nor the other, but simply allows a parent, by the exercise of the testamentary power, to dispose of his property according to his feelings, guided by experience,' (and such is the law of England,) what can the law do more towards securing the attainment of the medium which is desired? We agree with Miss Martineau in condemning the law of France, which makes what ought in every instance to be a question of fact, a pure question of law; and which, accordingly, leaves a parent little or no discretion in the disposal of his fortune. We agree that the law ought only to decide in the instance where a parent, dying intestate, shall have omitted to exercise his personal judgment. But in the event of an owner dyiag intestate, unless the property is to be left for a scramble, or to revert to the public, the law must determine the course of its transmission. It is on this contingency only, that the laws of England and of America interfere. We in this case pass the land to the eldest son; the Americans divide it equally among the children. T

is the law of primogeniture as known in England; and this is the outside amount of any possible mischief which can be created by the meddling of the law.' Moreover, the effect of the degree of preference, which we thus show to primogeniture, is confined in England to landed estates in fee simple and for life. Partibility is the law in the much more numerous instances of terms for years. Surely this state of the case breaks even the force of that example, by which the law is said to make a vitious custom. However, be the evil on this account what it may, on whom is it fairly chargeable? Let us suppose, that the people are led away by the necessary generalities of the law, and are not at the pains of making reasonable wills in their own particular cases,-what protection can be devised against a folly of this description? The law must say how the land is to go, if the owner throws the determination on the law. It can only say entirety or partibility. As far as the effect of legislatorial example may be apprehended, the legislator, in selecting a general rule, must choose between the opposite mischiefs of each extreme. If, in consequence of the English rule, land should have got, on one hand, into too large masses in England; or if, in consequence of the American rule, some day or other, land should fall into too small masses in America, is it the law in either instance which is to be blamed? Or is it not, in both cases, the people, whom their respective law leaves at perfect liberty, but who refuse to apply their understanding to their particular positions, so as to guard them against evils, from one or other of which, in point of fact, they cannot be protected by any law? But any of her conveyancer friends will explain to Miss Martineau that, as the positive effect of the law is confined within narrow limits-since it applies only to intestate interests, technically called freehold-its supposed influence in creating a mischievous testamentary custom, must also be disturbed and weakened by the opposite law of partibility, which extends over the much more important class of leasehold and personal estate. The truth is, these questions are too complex for dogmatical affirmations. Nobody can tell, by merely looking at the general law, how far it will necessarily in any country determine the mode in which the testamentary power shall, in consequence, be exercised. Partibility was the common law of Athens and of Rome. Nevertheless, the aggrandizement of properties in Athens is described as having originated in the practice of testamentary disposition, introduced by Solon. The size of estates in Italy became a great nuisance; yet, in addition to the law of partibility, wills, by which a child was disinherited, might in many cases be set aside as inofficious. The French in their passion for equality, have probably hurt their agriculture.