Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

the demand, it is not easy to say. The specific limit to them seems to be the turn of the exchange, and the impossibility of a country's maintaining its exports under an advance in the bullion price of labour, beyond what was balanced by peculiar skill and machinery, or the peculiar raw products which might be sold abroad at advanced bullion prices with little diminution of quantity. It is justly observed by Mr. Mill, in his Elements of Political Economy, (p. 129) that The increase of the quantity of the precious metals which diminishes the value of them, gradually diminishes and tends to destroy the power of exporting other commodities: the diminution of the quantity of the precious metals which increases their value, increases, by a similar process, the motive to the exportation of other commodities.' But an increase or decrease in the quantity of currency and credit, while paper exchanges at par with gold, or an increase or decrease in the rapidity with which the currency circulates, must, while it lasts, have precisely the same effects on the value of bullion and the state of the exports, as an increase or decrease of bullion. Mr. Mill, however, goes much too far, and probably much farther than he really intended, when he says, that a country will export. commodities other than the precious metals only when the value: of the precious metals is high,' and import only when the value of the precious metals is low. Experience informs us that the two greatest exporting nations of the world, England and America, are the two nations where the value of the precious metals is the lowest. But still the tendency, though counterbalanced in the way above stated, is exactly such as is described by Mr. Mill; and, accordingly, it was the turn of the exchange in 1800 which first separated the paper from the bullion.

[ocr errors]

Whether it is desirable that a deficiency in the supply compared with the demand, occasioned either by the seasons, or air increased proportion of unproductive consumption, should take place in order to call into action the stimulus of an increased currency and an increased power among capitalists of commanding labour, is quite another question. To wish for such a state of things seems to be something like wishing for a wound in order to see the energy and skill of nature in healing it. But however this may be, we cannot doubt that when such a state of things does occur, it is attended with the effects which have been stated; and we can safely refer to what we have said, and to the facts and general reasonings of Mr. Tooke's work, for the proofs of the fourth proposition, which we consider him as having established, namely, That when periods of deficient or abundant supply compared with the demand are of considerable duration, which is found by experience to be frequently the case, they are

[ocr errors]

necessarily

necessarily accompanied by a fall or rise in the value of the precious metals in the country where they take place, according to any mode of estimating their value which has ever been considered as approximating to the truth.

The four propositions, which we have separately examined, appear to us to be of vital importance to the science of political economy, as affording the only just explanation of the events of the last thirty years; and we consider Mr. Tooke as justly entitled to the thanks of the public for the indisputable proofs which his work affords of their truth......

For the reasons which have compelled us to think that some of the conclusions which Mr. Tooke intended to establish are not borne out by the facts brought forwards, we refer the reader to the different parts of our examination in which these points are treated of; but it is important to add, with a view to one of the main questions which he has proposed to discuss, that though we are most decidedly of opinion that the facts and general reasonings of his work distinctly prove that the alterations in the value of the whole currency were considerably greater than the difference between paper and gold, yet we are equally convinced they do not prove that these alterations, beyond such difference, were occasioned by the Bank restriction and Mr. Peel's bill. The direct effects of these measures were obviously confined to the difference between paper and gold; and it would be exceedingly difficult to form any sort of estimate of their indirect effects. The Bank restriction must no doubt have afforded some facilities to the economising of the currency; but the great rise of paper prices which it occasioned, by throwing a larger proportion of the produce of the country into the hands of the productive classes would be likely so to increase the supply, as to prevent the rise of bullion prices from going so far as it otherwise would have done; and, altogether, these indirect effects must have been very trifling there is every reason to believe, from the well ascertained power of the currency to increase in quantity and efficiency without separating from the standard, that if our paper had always been exchangeable for gold, we should still have seen a great rise of bullion prices during the war, and a great fall of them since; and that if another war should occur some time hence, accompanied by an under supply of corn, high freights and insurance, a great increase of population, and greatly increasing exports, but without a Bank restriction act, and its necessary consequence, a bill like that of Mr. Peel, we must expect the same fluctuations in the value of bullion, and in bullion prices, as have distinguished the last thirty years.

ᎪᎡᎢ .

ART. IX.—A Visit to Spain; detailing the Transactions which occurred during a Residence in that Country in the latter Part of 1822, and the first Four Months of 1823: with an Account of the Removal of the Court from Madrid to Seville; and general Notices of the Manners, Customs, Costume and Music of the Country. By Michael J. Quin, Barrister at Law, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. London. 1823. FROM the first appearance of Mr. Quin's work, in a series of Letters addressed to the Morning Herald, we marked the author as a man possessing the powers of accurate observation, joined to an uncommon degree of candour. To any one well acquainted with Spain, those letters bore an internal evidence of authenticity, which the most positive assertion that they were compiled in London out of promiscuous intelligence from Spain, could not for a moment weaken. In every line of the Madrid correspondent we recognized those national features which are deeply impressed on our memory. Every period called up a train of Spanish ideas; and we often found ourselves transported, by the spell of mental association, to places which we have frequently visited, saw the attitudes, and heard the tones of the orators of the Cortes, and lounged among the idle crowds of prating politicians at the Puerta del Sol..

Without disparagement, however, of Mr. Quin's abilities as a writer, we would not lead our readers to expect the same pleasing delusion in the perusal of his work. For us, indeed, his sketches have the peculiar charm which is found in a spirited outline portrait of an old friend: for others, they must fail to assume that tone of life and colouring which are reflected from previous impressions.

But there is a view in which Mr. Quin's book is sure to excite the interest of such as love truth for its intrinsic value, and with out any reference to preconceived partialities or wishes. The chief merit of the work before us arises from its being a true statement of the public transactions, in Spain, at the critical moment, when the progress of her new government was disturbed by the approach of a French army-describing with impartiality the feelings and temper of the party who had provoked the invasion; and showing, with the most perfect candour, the sense of the great mass of the nation, in regard to the Constitution. The value of this information, as an antidote to such travels as were, but lately, published with the object of gaining partizans, in this country, to the most violent of the Spanish political factions works written almost from the dictation of the Spanish liberals-is great as it is unquestionable; but that value must rise in the estimation of the

public when it is observed that the author is no friend of the Holy Alliance, no advocate for the armed interference of France.

'If any reader,' he says, ' after perusing these sheets, conclude from them that I am unfriendly to the liberties of Spain, I should regret it extremely. I went to that country perfectly unbiassed; I soon saw that the Constitution was impracticable, and I perfectly agreed with those who wished that it was as much as possible assimilated to the Constitution of England. But I did then abhor, as I do still, and ever shall abhor, the entry of a foreign power armed for the purpose of carrying those improvements into effect. Under such auspices no alterations can be effectual, and I am sure they cannot be for the benefit of freedom.'

Having, thus far, described the general character of the work before us, our readers will, we hope, excuse us, if we venture to offer them a key to the work itself, in a succinct view of the history of the human mind in Spain, from the formation of the HispanoGothic monarchy, to the beginning of the present disturbances. Much as we fear that the vastness of the subject will oblige us to trespass upon their patience, we are still more apprehensive that the pressure of our limits will confine us to a very superficial sketch. It is not at the option of a faithful historian to give novelty to his pages by attributing events to fanciful causes; else we would not alarm a fastidious part of the public by so early a mention of the INQUISITION. That mysterious tribunal, the real source of mental perversion among the Spaniards, is unfortunately such a tempting storehouse of horrors and nocturnal scenes for novel− writers, that we are really surprised, people have not altogether set it down for a fable. Yet such is the natural consequence of mixing truth and falsehood, the exaggerated, and nearly caricatured descriptions of that dreadful establishment,* have weakened considerably the feelings of detestation against it; or, what is more to be regretted, have shifted that detestation from the unalterable essence of the thing, to what are only accidental appendages. We should by no means be surprised if that policy which, in 1816, dictated a Papal bull abolishing the use of torture in the restored Inquisitions of Spain, should, upon a third restoration, make a fuller display of liberality by granting an open trial to the accused. Thus, by divesting religious tyranny of its external horrors, the patrons of the Inquisition would avert the burst of indignation which the unqualified re-establishment of that infernal engine might produce.-On the other hand, a plain historical view of the effects of the Inquisitorial system on the moral and intellectual character of Spain, and the fatal division which it has gradually and secretly produced in the nation, was never so much wanted, as when

* Such is Mrs. Radcliffe's, in the Italian.
Q

VOL. XXIX. NO. LVII.

the

the greater part of that noble but unfortunate people seem ready to rush from anarchical liberty into absolute despotism. The true friends of the Spaniards should, also, be thoroughly acquainted with the first link of that chain of evils, which the pre→ valent feeling of the country threatens to rivet into an interminable circle.

The circumstances which attended the growth of the Spanish nation from the time of Pelayo to the conquest of Granada, under Ferdinand and Isabella, were necessarily productive of the spirit of bigotry and religious intolerance which still forms the most proininent feature of that people. Such spirit is the inevitable consequence of conquest achieved in the name of heaven, and under the immediate influence of religious feeling. How, then, could it fail to manifest itself in the Spaniards who, by a war of seven centuries, recovered their own country from the hands of the Moors-the bitterest foes of the Christian religion-usurpers who justified their violence by retorting the opprobrious epithet of Infidels upon the natives? A contest so fierce and durable must have inseparably connected, in the minds of the Spaniards, every idea of honour with orthodoxy, and all that is disgraceful and odious, with dissent from their creed.

As long as the Moors were powerful, their military prowess saved them from the contempt of their adversaries: indeed, alliances between the Christian and Moorish kings, though always disreputable to the former, are frequent in the early part of Spanish history. The Mahometan inhabitants of conquered towns enjoyed, at that period, a certain degree of toleration, though inferior to what they had originally granted to the Christians. But the decline of the Moorish power after their signal defeat at the Navas de Tolosa, in 1212, allowed full scope to the proud zeal of the Castillians. Whatever traces of more enlightened views, and liberal sentiments exist in the annals of the Pyrenean Peninsula belong exclusively to Aragon, whose powerful and well organised aristocracy, commercial influence, and maritime connections, gave it a national character, bearing no slight resemblance to that which, under more fortunate circumstances, became the source of our liberties.

When the last of the Moorish states was conquered and such of the Mahometans as would not leave the land of their birth were left at the mercy of the victors, the ancient spirit of martial rivalry was completely transformed into that strange mixture of hatred, fear and contempt which turns a difference of creed into a source of imaginary pollution, making orthodoxy the principle of a pretended superiority of nature, which distinguishes the nobler from the inferior and degenerate castes. Hitherto the Jews alone had

been

« AnteriorContinuar »