and Cobden policy, so philanthropical to appearance, and so politic and partial in the fact. The total value of articles manufactured in the United Kingdom in 1838, is estimated by McCulloch at about £117,000,000 sterling, of which at least fifty millions were exported; producing, at 10 per cent. profit, an income of five millions sterling to the capitalists, which gives an average of £1000 each, to five thousand families among the educated classes. Here we have an immense body of influential persons enjoying an income by the export of manufactured goods, many of them too, like Peel and Cobden, possessed of vast wealth, accumulated, principally, by the employment of capital in manufactures. of taxation; and should the democratic spirit gain ground in England, we may live to see the whole interest of the debt paid in this way by the rich, instead of being paid as now by rich and poor alike. The income tax yields, at present, about five and a half millions; that it might easily be increased to twenty-seven, may be guessed from the fact, that the total income of capital in railways, funds, banks, manufactures and commerce in the United Kingdom, is reckoned (at 3 per cent.) at about forty-five millions. Now as far as funded property is concerned, a well distributed income tax is but a cancelling of so much of the national debt; and this policy seems likely to gain ground. To pursue the illustration: in the days It is surely unnecessary to attribute the when the landed proprietors, the mermotives of a mere agitator, or of a closet chants, and the manufacturers, bore an theorist, to the leaders of the English free equal sway in the councils of the nation, trade party, compelled as they are by the before the rise and predominance of the rivalry of our own manufactures in the manufacturing interest, none of the great foreign markets, to furnish everything at businesses of the nation failed of their the lowest possible rate. It is unneces- due protection. But now a new power sary, at least, to attribute any theoretical has arisen, a new manufacturing power, motives to them, and when the common and the vast body of rich manufacturers causes of political movements are consid- who command the markets of the world, ered, it is absurd. There are reasons are in danger of losing those markets, by enough to be found, why they should competition with ourselves-could we by lighten the duties on imported bread stuffs a protective policy, so far encourage our and on certain raw materials of manufac-miners and manufacturers as to undersell ture, without even the arguments of a famine, much less the idle declamations of a few enthusiasts, as ineffectual to change the course of English legislators as would be a mesmeric spell to draw the gold out of their purses. They are not of that persuadable stuff to be led away from their interests by a free trade hypothesis. The policy of the Peel party has been to lighten the duties on imported articles and supply the consequent deficiency of revenue by taxes on incomes. them at home and abroad. They command and can use the great body of the movable capital of the United Kingdom; they employ millions of pauper operatives, in constant danger of starvation; they are in a situation which compels them to strain every nerve, and exert every influence to save themselves from ruin; they will stick at nothing to accomplish their purposes. They cannot go to war, for that would spoil all; they cannot beat down the wages of their workmen, for A tax upon the incomes of the rich is these are already at the lowest; they have democratic, and popular, beyond a doubt; but two means left, and these are to buy and it has the advantage of drawing back in the cheapest and sell in the dearest into the treasury a part of the interest of market; to feed their operatives, and supthe national debt; it is a quiet way of ply their mills duty free, and to sell their equalizing the burthen of the debt: the products in America and elsewhere duty nation at large is taxed twenty-seven mill-free: they are, therefore, free traders on ions for that debt, which is paid by the Treasury to the stockholders. Now if a good part of this tax is levied upon the rich, by a graduated income tax, it is but king a number of rich men pay the inof the debt-a very popular kind | instinct, and having the instinct, they pass, by a natural effect, to the theory. In a word, the great object of English manufacturers, just at this crisis, is to persuade the world that free trade is a capital thing. rich, and fattens by its corn fields; why should we, then, live poor and wretched? is there no way in which we too may prosper? Our commerce is great, but it is a commerce carried on between foreign countries and the great West; we benefit but little by it; it rather impoverishes than helps our country people, for they buy foreign goods with money, and not with produce, making nothing by the exchange; the West is always too strong for them in trade; the cities grow rich by commerce, but the country people grow poorer every day. It is, therefore, necessary for us to sustain our manufactures, to erect new mills, and make goods to exchange with these southern planters and western farmers, and so reap the grain ourselves that goes else to enrich foreigners. To bring these French and English goods across the ocean costs much, and involves many risks and losses; we will save the country this loss, and by competition we will break down the foreigner in his prices, and make him give more of his own in exchange for western products; by and by we will supply our countrymen of the South and West with all that they now get from foreigners, and that at a less price, exchanging with them for their corn and raw products; our wealth will then begin to overflow, and we will send our products to foreign nations, and bring home riches, and every luxury for ourselves and our countrymen; and thus our nation will be made complete and independent, with a rich interior, producing all the fruits of the earth, a barren region near the sea devoted to manufactures, and a coast adorned with commercial cities. The loss to the revenue, through the diminution of duties on imports, amounting, it is said, to some eleven millions sterling, had to be made up by the imposition of additional taxes. Thus, the manufacturers were relieved to the amount of eleven millions, all clear gain to them, and loss to those who bore the compensatory burthen. To say, then, that England has made the experiment of free trade, is merely false; for the principle of the free trade economists is, that the nation shall not be taxed to sustain a particular interest. England has taxed her incomes and other sources eleven millions, to support the manufacturers. Not questioning the wisdom of this policy, or denying that it is a vital point with England to sustain her manufacturers, since by them chiefly she has become the richest nation in the world; admitting, too, that this policy will accomplish its end, and save the British manufacturers from ruin; let us now inquire what policy these free trade leaders would pursue, acting on their present principles, and instigated by the same motives, were they Americans, with a large capital, invested in manufactures in New England. First, then, at all risks they would sustain the country, labor to preserve its acquisitions, and open for it new sources of wealth. Observing that the States of New England are composed chiefly of a rocky and unfruitful soil, they would not entertain the hope of sustaining a dense population there by agriculture. Seeing, too, the rapid impoverishment of the towns and villages, by the removal of ablebodied men, and of capital, to the new lands of the West, and the ruin of the small farmers, by the influx of cheap provision Are not these reasonings identical in from the western lands, they would cast principle with those which actuate the about for some means of filling up the free-traders of England? Their position loss occasioned by that emigration, and of compels them to sustain their manufacproviding new means of subsistence for tures, for by these they draw to themselves those who were thrown out of employ- a great part of the wealth which makes ment by the stagnation of agriculture. them powerful, and defends them against Every part of this new continent, they the encroachments and the bad influences would say, ought to support an active of neighboring nations. Human liberty has and wealthy population; but how shall been upheld and defended by the industry, we make New England, or the barren as much as by the courage of England; regions of the Southern and Middle States, but that industry is drawn out by capital, do this? At present, all these regions and capital is created by manufactures. lie waste, or are thinly and poorly inhab- It would be impossible for England or ited; the people have neither means nor for any nation to acquire great power and leisure, and must soon become miserable wealth by agriculture alone; for of all inand unimportant. The great West grows | dustrial pursuits agriculture is that whi yields the least surplus of profit to the producer. Commerce and exchange may be reckoned the most profitable of all; but manufactures, much more than agriculture, furnish the material and the occasion for commercial enterprise. They create merchandise of a character like specie, exchangeable and easily transportable. Countries, therefore, like England, and the barren regions of our Eastern and Middle States, if they mean to prosper and sustain a thriving population, must engage in manufactures. Mentally revolving the course that events have taken in the political world, we seem to discover, indeed, no issue towards which they tend more remarkable or more alarming than the establishment of new and unconstitutional powers in the Executive-the powers of creating war, of withholding information, of taxing, and despotically governing, conquered territory; add to these the creation of armies for the sake, if not of patronage, then of new wars and of new unlooked-for uses of power; the formation of a false public opinion, the turning of the powers of the general government upon enterprises confessedly calculated for the aid of an exorbitant ambition. These things, indeed, excite an alarm most reasonable, and that should lead to the most decisive action among conscientious men. It is discovered that the limitation of the Presidential term to a short period, is not a sufficient safeguard to liberty; erroneous precedents, party precedents, grow gradually into law, and the accumulated mass of them are handed from one term to another, like the traditional usurpations of a hierarchy, until in a course of ages, every feature of the original Constitution is buried and forgotten. Though these just fears may, indeed, image forth the head of our FUTURE POLICY, we are not, therefore, to forget other things,-to be so occupied with the head and front of the offence as to forget the vile and corrupting body. It is a matter of some importance to the nation that its sources of wealth and power should be kept open, and that the chinks and scuttles, through which its riches are flowing away like water, should be stopped; in a word, that it should not be left a prey to foreign enterprise, and have one great third of its productive power sacrificed to the uni selfishness of the remaining two-thirds. This word "selfishness," so easily and idly employed, does not, it must be confessed, assist the argument; but it may serve here to suggest a reflection not inapt for the conclusion of this article. The wealth of a nation, meaning by its wealth, that moderate surplus of means which is necessary to its freedom and power, is created by at least three distinct and contrasted kinds of industry: indeed, so very distinct and contrasted, they breed opposite habits and permanent differences of character, in those who use them. These are, the production from mines, or from the soil, of the raw material of industry; the manufacture of these materials into commodities; and the transportation and exchange of commodities in trade and commerce. The hamlets, villages and open spaces of the country are occupied by those who produce the crude material; the towns near rivers, canals, and at the meeting of great roads, are chiefly occupied by manufacturers; while cities by the sea, and on great streams, bays and lakes, are the head-quarters of trade, and owe their riches to commerce. We need no argument to show that a nation without commerce can never rise to the first importance, and in all ages statesmen and rulers have become celebrated and respected more by their encouragement of roads, canals, shipping, and all the enterprise of commerce, from the protection of caravans to the founding of commercial cities, than for their successful wars. Nor is a nation capable of sustaining itself long without a constant attention to agriculture. Egypt, Grece, Rome, China, India, interior Germany, and above all, England, have made agriculture the right arm of the public industry. But what great nation, that has a sufficient respect for itself, does not desire to complete the circle of its industry, and add manufactures to agriculture and commerce? Why should we stupidly insist upon producing and transporting our raw material to other more cunning and ingenious nations? Why must a bale of flax grown in Ohio, be lugged across the scornful billows of the Atlantic, to be worked up in England? Why should not our faithful brothers and countrymen do that for us at home? Patience is exhausted in such an argument; the good sense of the nation is insulted by it. MONALDI.* THE memory of Allston, which time is year by year ripening into the immortal fame of a great and good artist, must be a sufficient warrant for recalling the attention of the public to a story by him, already several years before it. Or, if it is necessary to apologize for making a book, published seven years ago, the subject of an article, we may acknowledge a higher motive than reverence for its author-a desire to turn the eyes of readers to what they ought not willingly to let die. It is as much the duty of criticism in literature and art to teach the pure faith directly, as well as indirectly, by pointing out and inveighing against heresies. Not only must we pluck up and lop off the noxious weeds and unhealthy shoots in the garden where we are called to labor, but we must water the flowering shrubs and young fruit trees; we must dig about them repeatedly, at such time as the dew of heaven shall fall most genially upon the upturned clods; yea, we must fertilize the soil wherein they are set, even with such harmless composition as forms the substance of articles and essays. In fine, it is our vocation to call attention to what is to be admired as well as what is to be avoided, to analyze merit as well as demerit, to keep good books alive as well as to put bad ones out of their pain. interesting conversation, and refined manners. Of this sort is Monaldi. Though it appeared long ago, and came from the pen of our first artist, it scarcely attracted a passing attention; in a few months it was unwritten of and unspoken of; we doubt if many of our distant readers do not here see the very name for the first time, out of the poems of Rogers. Yet this is not because the book deserves, or is destined, to slip away thus quietly into oblivion; but simply, as we shall endeavor to show, because it is one of those exquisite works of art which never make an extensive acquaintance with the world, and only become known even to the refined and discriminating, by slow degrees during the lapse of years. It was ready for the press, the author informs us, as long ago as 1822, and was finally given to the public in a thin volume of two hundred and fifty pages, "not," he says, "with the pretensions of a Novel, but simply as a Tale.” How much thought, and study, and artistic skill he felt it becoming to speak thus modestly of, we shall discover in tracing the course of the story. A delightful old novel feeling is inspired by the opening paragraph of the introduction: "There is sometimes so striking a resemblance between the autumnal sky of Italy and Some books come into life stout and vigorous; they make a general acquaintance all at once, and, to hear how they that of New England at the same season, that are spoken of, one would suppose that when the peculiar features of the scenery are they were going to live forever, and be obscured by twilight, it needs but little aid of known all over the world; yet it is marvel- the imagination in the American traveller to lous how many of these die off in a short fancy himself in his own country: the time, and are never thought of afterward. bright orange of the horizon, fading into a low Others there are of a more delicate consti- yellow, and here and there broken by a slender tution, and of extremely retired habits, bar of molten gold, with the broad mass of pale who hardly venture beyond the book-apple-green blending above, and the sheet of shelves and centre-tables of a few choice friends, but in time come to be reverenced and respected for their learning, or their the zenith-all carry him back to his dearer deep azure over these, gradually darkening to home. It was at such a time as this, and beneath such a sky, that (in the year 17-) while * Monaldi ; a Tale. By WASHINGTON ALLSTON. Boston: Little & Brown. 1841. VOL. I. NO. IV. NEW SERIES. 23 my vettura was slowly toiling up one of the mountains of the Abruzzo, I had thrown myself back in the carriage, to enjoy one of those mental illusions which the resemblance between past and present objects is wont to call forth. Italy seemed for the time forgotten; I was journeying homeward, and a vision of beaming, affectionate faces passed before me; I crossed the threshold, and heard-oh, how touching is that soundless voice of welcoming in a day-dream of home-I heard the joyful cry of recognition, and a painful fullness in my throat made me struggle for words -when, at a sudden turn of the road, my carriage was brought to the ground." This is not an imitation, but a condensation, and reproduction, of the tone and coloring of an old novel-we say old, in the sense that the stories read, and the impressions produced in childhood, bear an air of antiquity-we mean that it takes hold of the fancy like a story read in youth; while, at the same time, the mature artist is apparent in the delicate purity of the style, and in the beauty of the sentiment. We may be misled by the impression of the whole work, yet it seems that this single paragraph exhibits very plainly these characteristics. It recalls the feelings of boyhood, while, at the same time, it gives promise that we are about to enter on no meagre child-tale, but one of character, thought and pas sion. The breaking of the carriage, and the manner of the driver, induce the traveller to suspect him of being leagued with banditti presently a whistle is heard below which confirms the suspicion, and he compels the fellow to go before him up the mountain. After some time they come to a small plain, or heath, where there is a hovel, before which sits a wretched object, a miserable maniac, worn almost to death; an old woman then comes from the hovel, who directs the traveller to a convent hard by, where he is received and hospitably entertained by a venerable prior. Next morning, the prior shows him the pictures in the chapel, and is about to show him one, which he says is worth all the rest, when he is called out, and the traveller, opening a wrong door, comes unawares into the apartment where it is placed. the fearful vision is even now before me—I seemed to be standing before an abyss in space, boundless and black. In the midst of this permeable pitch stood a colossal mass of gold, in shape like an altar, and girdled about by a huge serpent, gorgeous and terrible; his body flecked with diamonds, and his head, an enormous carbuncle, floating like a meteor in the air above. Such was the throne. But no words can describe the gigantic being that sat thereon-the grace, the majesty, its transcendent form; and yet I shuddered as I looked, for its superhuman countenance seemed, as it were, to radiate falsehood; every feature was in contradiction-the eye, the mouth, even to the nostril-whilst the expression of the whole was of that unnatural softness which can only be conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and I turned for relief to the figure below; for at his feet knelt one who appeared to belong to our race of earth. But I had turned from the first only to witness in this second object its withering fascination. It was a man apparently in the prime of life, but pale and emaciated, as if prematurely with outstretched hands, and eyes upraised to wasted by his unholy devotion, yet still devoted, their idol, fixed with a vehemence that seemed almost to start them from their sockets. The agony of his eye, contrasting with the prostrate, reckless worship of his attitude, but too well told his tale: I beheld the mortal conflict between the conscience and the will-the visible look no longer." struggle of a soul in the toils of sin. I could He naturally wishes to know the history of this extraordinary picture, and its author; and the prior accordingly gives him a manuscript which, he says, will gratify his curiosity. This is the story. The opening chapter then introduces two principal personages of the tale, Monaldi and Maldura, young students and intimate friends at a seminary at Bologna. We wish a few sentences could give an idea of the depth of reflection, the philosophy, the exquisite discrimination in the drawing of character, and the pure, simpl elegance of the style. There is a greatness of thought and an elevation in tone which takes the imagination far into the poetic region, and yet the art is so thoroughly hidden that superficial readers who are accustomed to see the artist through a coarser veil or not at all, must of course skim it over easily and fancy it "I put up my hand to shade my eyes, when cold and common. |