this subject his views are just, liberal, and enlightened; and he is the more deserving of praise for the frankness with which he has avowed his opinions, because we fear they are not calculated to be very palatable to certain classes of his compatriots, with whom it behoves public teachers in France at the present day to be, at least," upon easy terms. We wish, indeed, we could be sure that even among ourselves there may not be some who deem such notions not quite safe, inasmuch as they do not appear to have occurred to the founders of the British constitution. But for the sake of such of our readers as think knowledge no dangerous innovation, forbidden by the wisdom of our ancestors, we shall give M. Fodéré's opinions in his own words, which comprise, indeed, in substance, all that can well be urged upon the question, whether ignorance among the people be advantageous to their rulers.

I have already said, that it is not the instruction of a little fraction of the people that can secure the public weal, but education generally diffused, and brought home to every class in society. In vain do you pride yourselves on your institutes, your academies, your learned societies spread through all the departments; your reports, your discourses, your pompous panegyrics are yours only; the people read neither your books nor your journals; you form but an aristocracy of learned persons who work not for them, and we are yet as in the age of Moliere, when they spoke Latin in the academies of the capital, while in the country and in the small towns the people knew not how to sign their names. I wish to show that ignorance is calamitous alike to the people and to those who govern them; and that a system of education, such as I contemplate, is the first principle of national wealth, of the power of the prince, and of the security of the whole nation.'.

As to the security of the prince, and of governments in general, the history of all times furnishes us with whole volumes to prove that this security depends in no sort upon the lights which may be spread among a small fraction of their subjects, a fraction often restless, ambitious, and turbulent, but upon this, that all the middle and lower classes. have received some education, and the first elements of general knowledge. It cannot be denied me that a people ignorant and degraded will remain indifferent to every change of masters; will follow the impulse of habit and prejudice; and that with them any effort at amendment must fail; that, on the contrary, an enlightened people, who have not been thus debased, will cherish their prince and their country, -two names united together in their affections, and the honour and independence of which they are ever ready to maintain; that with such a people, in short, no advancement in agriculture or the arts is impossible. I grant that such a people will be more difficult to lead by means of deceit, by measures of mere routine; but let sound principles prevail in their government; let justice be dealt towards them, they will feel and be grateful, and will be a rampart against the factious. But so long as you leave them in rudeness and ignorance, you have still, it is true, the pleasure of deceiving them; but at the least false lights held out to them by your enemies, you will see your best cemented fortresses tumbling to the ground.' - pp. 134-137.

The scheme, however, upon which M. Fodéré chiefly relies for removing and preventing pauperism consists of a set of measures, which he details very minutely, and the direct object of which is, to encourage agriculture, and to check commerce and manufactures where he supposes them likely to interfere with the cultivation of the soil. Most of his speculations on this part of his subject are applied specially to France; but whether right or wrong, they are (and indeed so their author considers them) of universal application.

After stating some very unquestionable truths on the policy of maintaining in each nation a direction to industry, corresponding to the local circumstances of the country, (a direction which, it may be observed in passing, the industry of every nation will take spontaneously, without imposing on legislatures the trouble of making laws,) he gives a brief sketch of the progress of agriculture in Europe, and more particularly in France; and concludes that means ought to be taken, without delay, to force industry, in the latter country, away from commerce and manufactures, to agriculture. He contrasts the situation of France with that of England; the latter, from its insular position and its extensive and numerous colonies, having abundant markets for her produce; the former being almost destitute of colonies, being moreover capable of producing few commodities different from those of her neighbours, and having consequently but few articles fit for commercial exchange. He endeavours to show, that although agriculture has made great progress in France during late years, much still is needed in the way of improvement; and he concludes, that as there are large tracts of land uncultivated which might be reclaimed, and as there has been a great increase in the population of the towns, and a corresponding increase in their poor, true policy requires that this crowded population should be diverted from the towns, where they flock for employment in works of manufacture, and be employed in the cultivation of the soil. Manufactures he considers injurious, when carried on to the extent to which they are now proceeding in France, because, among other reasons, they collect large numbers together engaged in unwholesome employments; because the workmen attached to them are liable to be thrown suddenly into idleness and poverty by the failure of their masters; because they accumulate large fortunes in the hands of individuals, thus occasioning, by the successful speculations of wealthy capitalists, the ruin of their neighbours, whose products they are often enabled to drive out of the market by the low price at which the improvements daily made in machinery allow them to vend their own; and a great deal of argument is employed to prove, that machinery is little short of a curse to a densely-peopled nation. To the usual topics urged on this subject, namely, that the use of machinery augments the number of unemployed poor, and tends to produce a glut of commodities, M. Fodéré adds,

that by multiplying those pests of society which continually haunt his imagination,-large individual fortunes, it tends to create the worst species of aristocracy, an insolent oligarchy of commercial capitalists.

To give a direction to industry corresponding to these views, M. Fodéré proposes the establishment of two boards or councils (conseils), to be attached to each prefecture in the kingdom, one to superintend agriculture and rural economy, and the other to preside over commerce and the arts of industry. These councils, especially the latter, he would invest with very extensive powers. The board of agriculture should have, in effect, the instruction and guidance of the whole rural community in the art of cultivating and improving the soil, and, moreover, should be employed to draw up rules or laws, for the regulation of the agricultural population; and many of our author's suggestions on these subjects, which we have not space to notice, appear to us to be extremely just, and equally applicable to all agricultural countries. But M. Fodéré's views are not confined to the mere improvement of the art of agriculture; and the combined operation of his two councils would indeed work a mighty change in the condition of the society on which (were the thing practicable) their labours might chance to be bestowed. The following are some of the objects designed by their institution.

All productions of foreign nations which might interfere with those of the French soil should be prohibited; and how sweeping that prohibition should be, our author takes care to apprise us (p. 170.), when he includes among the products which ought to be encouraged in France, beet, from which sugar might be extracted, in order to save the expence of importing it from America; potatoes, from which might be manufactured alcohol for the people of the North; plants, from which stuff might be produced for tanning and dying; to which M. Fodéré adds an et cetera of portentous meaning. The design, of course, would be to raise, at whatever ruinous cost, all that human labour could extract from the soil at home, for the single purpose of increasing the number of persons employed in its cultivation.

Every new invention in machinery should be strictly examined, with a view to two distinct objects; first, to the number of persons seeking employment it might exclude from the manufacture in which it might tend to abridge human labour; and, secondly, to the price and abundance of those commodities which it might have a tendency to cheapen. By a reference to these considerations the new machine ought to be admitted or prohibited.

The introduction, from other countries, of such machinery as may be already in use, or hereafter allowed, should be strictly prohibited for two reasons; first, their manufacture ought to be encouraged at home; secondly, it would be desirable to render them more scarce and dear.

But the project which must sound the strangest to English ears is that of re-establishing those laws giving exclusive privileges to incorporated trades, and requiring apprenticeships as conditions for entering those trades, which were abolished in France at the Revolution, and the vexation, oppression, absurdity, and impolicy of which are now almost universally acknowledged. M. Fodéré, advocate as he is for increasing the comforts of the rural population, and for augmenting their numbers, does not hesitate to avow that he proposes the restoration of this exploded system, in order to make the profits of the artizans greater and more equal, by limiting competition. In other words, he would give to the incorporated tradesmen and manufacturers of the towns a monopoly, extending over town and country, enhancing the price of many of the necessaries, and all the comforts, of life to the whole population!

This is, we think, a faithful sketch of M. Fodéré's chief scheme for the amelioration of civil societies, and in a more especial manner for improving the condition of his belle France. We do not think there is much danger that his system will be adopted by his countrymen. Although their progress in political knowledge has been far from keeping pace with their extraordinary advances in other sciences, the quick instinct of self-interest would set all classes in instant opposition to the wild statesman who should venture upon measures to reduce these visions to practice. In this country it would be idle even to attempt the refutation of some of the doctrines of M. Fodéré. There are few among us, for instance, who could be induced to believe that improvements in machinery which, in the interval between 1765 and 1825, enabled England to increase her exports of one species of her manufactures (cotton goods) from 200,000l. to 30,795,000l. in value, could have abridged the comforts of the lower orders, or, in the result, have diminished the number of labourers employed in our manufactures. And our author has himself furnished us with some reasons for thinking that even that class of his countrymen for whom he feels so deep an interest, the agricultural body, would by no means concur in his schemes for their improvement. It would seem that at the very time when M. Fodéré was planning the extension of agricultural speculations, the owners and tillers of the soil were complaining of the low price of its produce. He comforts them indeed by the assurance that prices were no better in the times before the Revolution (times, by the way, to which he frequently recurs with many pathetic aspirations concerning the good old usages of his fathers); and he adds, that the condition of the peasantry is now vastly improved; that they are better clad, better fed, and better. housed; and that they indulge in luxuries or comforts which their predecessors never thought of. It is surprising that it should never once have occurred to M. Fodéré, that if prices be really low, there is at least quite as much produce raised as the wants of the community require; and that to force farther production must sink

deeper in distress those who now complain that their industry does not meet an adequate reward. And, supposing his account of the peasantry to be correct, it is equally strange that he should not have perceived that the improvement in their condition, which he urges as an argument to soothe their cupidity for farther gain, could only have arisen from the augmentation of the wealth and numbers of those commercial classes who supply the chief markets for the produce of the soil, but whom, as well as the agriculturists, his schemes would ruin.

We have not space to notice, in detail, the other parts of M. Fodéré's work. They comprise some brief, but spirited sketches, partly historical, partly statistic, of the rise and progress of mendicity, and of the institutions and expedients to check or relieve it in Europe, and particularly in France. His account of the establishment of hospitals, and his remarks on institutions for foundlings, will be read with some interest; but we cannot refrain from expressing our regret, that, instead of attempting to complete a system, he did not make at least this portion of his work more strictly statistic. They who might turn with a smile from his speculations on the means of repressing illegitimacy, and preventing the growth of mendicity and pauperism, would receive, with far different impressions, the suggestions which he seems well qualified to offer more in detail, on the discipline of hospitals, and of places for the confinement and reformation of delinquents condemned to temporary imprisonment.

On the whole, we do not apprehend much danger to political economy from the attacks of such assailants as M. Fodéré. His aversion to foreign trade is no doubt shared by many of his countrymen; among whom, and in the highest quarters, the notion seems to be still cherished, that what makes their neighbours rich, must necessarily make them poor. Truth is usually a plant of slow and sickly growth, when first set in a soil overrun with a multitude of old and sturdy errors. Political economy, though it has lived long in England, yet even here has but lately lifted its head. It is yet, with us, but in blossom. And, like our other improvements in policy and legislation, its fruits must be seen here before other nations will share it. But in this, as in so many previous lessons, England is assuredly destined to be the teacher of her neighbours. What is proved to be profitable to her will at length be adopted by those who most envy and fear her prosperity. If any thing, however, can retard the diffusion of those principles which are founded upon as large a collection of well authenticated facts as any within the whole range of inductive knowledge, it is that idle and adventurous spirit of exaggeration to which we have already alluded; which would almost represent political science as capable of the strictest proof the human intellect can admit; and which would vainly seek to place all its favourite doctrines upon the same level of exact certainty. That some doctrines of political economy are