duced in a greater degree than the amount in circulation be reduced, the value of the currency will also be reduced.

In his twentieth chapter, the author has, among a great deal of verbiage, given out a few correct notions on the present state of things in England at the present moment.

"Fortified by nature against her enemies-with a people above all others sober and industrious, a soil eminently productive, minerals of unequalled value, variety, and abundance; above all, with talent, ingenuity and energy, surpassing every nation on the earth-England is at best a wretched, unhappy, oppressed country. Around us lie dormant the materials for labour, the surface of the earth half cultivated, the treasures below unexhausted, the produce unmanufactured: yet a great part of our people are idle, ill fed, fretful mendicants. In the better walks of life our youth want occupation, their energies wither or are perverted. Even the patrician affectation of those who move highest and haughtiest in the great world, often but ill disguises the lean skeleton of dignity. Of our occupations, how large a part waits upon aristocratic taste. How much more certain a road to affluence is patronage, than merit. It has been proved that two-fifths of our people are really idle, either in poverty or splendour. Of the remaining three-fifths-what is the proportion of producers, of those who increase our wealth, and confirm our national superiority? What, rather, is the proportion of those, whose free wills belong to the patrons, to whose gratifications they subserve? Art and science never flourished as now, never were so many devoted to the pursuit of them. But do we infer strength from hence? Surely no! For art ever flourishes under a despotic, or oligarchal government. The pursuits of taste ever receive most encouragement, when property is most partially distributed. Yet, in England, government is not despotic, for that is comparatively free; it is the despotism of wealth that bears everything down :-yet not of wealth, for we are not so wealthy as we were, but of credit; the despotism consists of those whom the state has given 800 millions of promises to pay :-to pay what? whatever (as they contend) a pound sterling happens to be worth; and it has been shewn, that it may by caprice, or accident, to-morrow be worth ten-fold as much as to-day. These creditors of the state, are the oligarchy who patronize the arts. Who then are the supporters of our constitution? That small remainder, the oppressed and tax-ridden agriculturist and manufacturer, and they, poor men, with bended backs, stand like Atlas, fretfully sustaining all the burdens of the state. It is grievous to think that they, their interest being one and the same, should have been made jealous of each other, by those who prey on them both.

"It is as clear as day, that a great though silent proprietary revolution has been effected in this country since the war. The well mixed ingre. dients of society have been alchemized, and the mixture is now subsiding into two well defined strata, for the middle classes are almost lost-they have risen to be patricians, or sunk to be plebeians.

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The remarkable feature in our society is the co-existence of wealth, want, and idleness; of wealth which does not relieve want; of capital, which does not employ labour: that men having their heads and hands

unemployed should not make for themselves food and clothing: that we should have at one a patrician and a pauper aristocracy, both dependent upon the industry which intervenes and divides them that the generality of men cannot live by industry, cannot raise themselves to independence, cannot of themselves exert the energies given them by nature, cannot work and defy the world, but must perforce cling to the skirts of some friend, some patron, some benefactor, or else sink into idleness and starvation that those who are employed should live by offices and cares for the concerns of others, and not by increasing production. It is not so in America; there men stand by the force of individual strength, by the exercise of individual energy, they stand and prosper, and can defy their neighbours and the world." Yet, they enjoy the advantages of society, and the subdivision of labour, and each man takes to himself a rateable share of the surplus which subdivision enables society to, produce. This is the condition of freedom, and of nature. In this country, although for ages property has been locked up in mortmain, by the unequal laws of our Norman conquerors, and the extortion of monastic superstition: although modern wisdom has done nothing to set loose this wealth to industry and competition, yet even here, the same state, at least much of the same freedom, existed till 1816. It was then that we were proud and happy, and generous; mighty, and free. It was then that those national songs were written, those anthems to our valour, generosity, and might, which now grate on the ear like the mockery of που. For then all men were industrious; industry brought plenty, content, and independence; content brought harmony; harmony brought unity; and the unity of independent individuals made our nation spirited, powerful and victorious. Now, we are not nearly so strong, or so fierce, or so independent as we were.- The present well-digested system of patronage, penetrating every section of society, and teaching each man to court the pleasure, or serve the will of his neighbour, has made us servile, self-diffident, weak, and cowardly.

"We have established associations for mutual protection, benevolence, and support, trusting that unity is strength. But we are united as sheep driven by a wolf, in clanship which has neither object nor existence in a state of freedom; seeing not the enemy which we dread, we crouch together like children from a ghost. Such associations are well enough in their way; they are necessary in the state of things from which they spring, but surely they bespeak a broken spirit, and individual and national weak

ness.

"What is the alkali by which society is blended? Free industry-free competition for property, and the produce of labour. What acid has neutralized its power, and decomposed society in England? Taxation. Yet we have 800 millions of funded property. Why do men bury their capital in the funds, instead of employing it in conjunction with labour? This is the deception. The funds are but the mirage of wealth, a complex means by which one man is enabled to live on the labour of another. Men often think that when they put money in the funds, they add to the riches of the state, and ask how capital could be employed if there were no funds. They do not remember that when A buys in, B sells out; the money is not left in idleness. Again, it is said, that money accumulates

in large masses in London. To appearance this is stupendously true, but true to a very small extent in fact. Money deposited with bankers is not kept in idleness, and except the reserve at the Bank of England, no great amount stagnates; therefore the reason why capital and labour do not amalgamate, is, because capital in fact does not exist. It exists in appearance, but the appearance is occasioned by the deficiency, and not by the means; by debt, and not by assets. The national debt is a means by which one man is enabled to consume the produce of another man's labour, therefore the one is master, the other is servant. Do we need another reason for the patronizing spirit of the age ?"-pp. 111-114.

If the principles which we have endeavoured to unfold be true, a currency composed of paper money convertible into the precious metals, under any regulations, must be always exposed, in a great and peculiar degree, to those two evils to which, as we have already stated, all kinds of currency are in some measure subject-fluctuations in the quantity and value of money, and insolvency of the money dealers.

Banks which issue paper money are tempted to increase their issues beyond due bounds, by two strong attractions; first, the profits realised from the notes they circulate, and secondly, the increased business arising from the accommodation which the liberal advances of money thus created enables them to give to their customers. In addition to this, it will be remembered, that they have absolutely no means of ascertaining whether they are adding to a sound or a plethoric circulation-unless, indeed, it has already been filled to such an excess, that coin or bullion are demanded for exportation, and their notes are actually returned upon them by the holders, in order to procure the gold or silver required. Unfortunately, too, those bankers who both possess real capital, and conduct their business with prudence and caution, are compelled to follow the example of such of their neighbours as seek to force themselves upon customers by the liberality of their advances. The former, to sustain themselves against such competitors, are obliged to be liberal too; and thus the currency, in a season suited to specula. tion, becomes enlarged in consequence of the proceedings of its rashest and often most worthless contributors.

How far such a course of conduct may create a spirit of overtrading, some have doubted. That it is calculated to strengthen and to forward that spirit, and to accelerate the crisis to which it leads, few, we believe, are now disposed to question.

It would be inconsistent with our purpose, to dwell upon the influence of a currency, such as we are here examining, in aggravating the evils and impeding the remedies of a scarcity of the necessaries of life-in disturbing the natural and regular relations of commerce, deceiving alike the foreign and the home traderin varying contracts, and working, at times, by the mere operation of altered prices, complete changes of property, raising some to

sudden riches, and plunging others into ruin against which it is impossible to provide. Neither do we think it necessary, after what we have already said, to engage in a formal proof, that all sudden and large augmentations of a convertible paper currency must endanger, necessarily and imminently, the solvency of those who issue it. In as much as the quantity of gold (supposing gold to be, as it is with us, the standard of the currency), must always in such a currency bear a small proportion to the whole circulating medium, the exportation of a comparatively small quantity, when the currency is so dilated as to turn the course of foreign trade, will produce, at best, a danBut if the increase and depreciation of the curgerous vacuum. rency be so great as to occasion a violent and sudden influx of foreign commodities, and a violent and sudden efflux of gold to pay the balance upon them, what must be the result? The banks are besieged by applicants for gold in exchange for paper; alarmed at the run, they contract their issues; the current however still continues, and gold is unceasingly demanded to supply it; at length the numbers become so great of those who seek to convert paper into gold for profit, that others become alarmed, and apply to the banks for specie through a fear of their insolvency; gold is now hoarded: credit, without which commerce, at home or abroad, cannot exist for a day, is destroyed; and a panic spreads like the blast of a hurricane throughout the country, involving in promiscuous ruin the hollow and the substantial, the innocent and the guilty.

ART. VI. On the Influence of Atmosphere and Locality; Change of Air, and Climate; Seasons; Food; Clothing; Bathing; Exercise; Sleep; Corporeal and Intellectual pursuits, &c. &c. on Human Health, constituting Elements of Hygiene. By ROBLEY DUNGLISON, M. D., Professor of Materia Medica, Therapeutics, Hygiene, and Medical Jurisprudence, in the University of Maryland, &c. &c. Philadelphia. 1835. MANY people question, and we think justly, the uses of popular works on medicine and disease; because in unprofessional hands, they do a great deal more injury than good. But the tendency of Dr. Dunglison's treatise is totally different from those we have in our eye; and were it to take the place of Buchan's Domestic Medicine in every house in the land, we are fully persuaded the exchange would be of a vast and immediate benefit to the community. Medicinal art has a double scope; that of the preservation of the sound, and the restoration of the sick. To the healthy it offers a continuance of health, to the sick it holds out recovery; nor does it rejoice less in nature's prosperity, than it is subsidiary in her VOL. 11. (1836) No. IV.

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adversity. Our author directs himself in a popular way to the former, and certainly the most effectual branch. Instead of atempting to instruct every plain unprofessional man how to doctor himself when under disease, he shows in the clearest manner how every man may provide against disease, and the frequent use of any doctor.

The author states that the want of a text-book to accompany his lectures induced the present publication to supply the deficiency, and at the same time to "enable the general reader to understand the nature of the actions of various influences on human health, and assist him in adopting such means as may tend to its preservation." In this we think he has succeeded in a very satisfactory manner; and although we may not agree with the learned author in many of his conclusions, or ascribe the same value to some of the facts he has adduced in support of them, we can truly say that his work adds another to the many claims he has on the gratitude of the profession, and can recommend it to the public with the utmost confidence, as one of the best treatises on the subject.

Before entering on the consideration of the topics that more especially appertain to hygiene, the author makes some brief observations on certain points of general physiology, an ignorance of which, as he justly observes, would prevent the student from fully comprehending the subject; as these, however, are more calculated to impart the requisite information to the general than to the professional reader, and have been more fully developed in his work on "Human Physiology," we shall pass them over without comment, except his definition of hygiene, which we think is somewhat involved. Thus, after stating that a harmonious performance of the functions constitutes health, whilst an aberration of one or more of them produces, or is in fact itself a state of disease, he goes on to say

The object of hygiene is to inquire into the circumstances which may give rise to this aberration, or, in other words, into the influence of physical and moral agents on healthy man; and thence to deduce the best means for preserving health, and for developing all the healthful energy of which the functions are capable."

Now, without wishing to be captious, we would object to the two clauses of this definition as not conveying the same ideas. The first would seem to exclude from the objects of hygiene all those influences which act in a beneficial manner on the organization, and restrict it to such only as may cause disease; whilst the latter takes the true and more extended view of it, as including the operation of all these agents. The best definition of this term is that given by Foderé: "Hygiene is the art of preserving health and preventing disease."

From this it will be perceived that hygiene includes the whole of