and learning both as an historian and a philosopher, since his scholarship is as fresh and original as his thinking. The historical portions, such as the introductory sketch of the progress of the science and the passages upon American tariffs and money in the United States, are very carefully studied and valuable. He claims originality less for specific parts of his book than for its whole drift, while he regards himself as the author of one important improvement in the language of political economy, the substitution of value for the word wealth, which he never uses in the technical sense. Prof. Perry takes his place in the third of the three great classes of modern political economy, which are called by the names of Quesnay, Adam Smith, and Whately, and which insist severally upon land and labor and exchange as the sources of value. While American economists follow Smith or else quit the track of severe science to accept the Nationalist School of Henry C. Carey, the author follows in the path of Whately, Bastiat, and others, who put the field of the science in the science of exchanges or the doctrine of values. While the science of ethics deals with what ought to be, political economy deals with value. With him political economy is the science of value, and of nothing else. But of course everything comes into it, so far as it has value, and the ought of conscience is not naught in value, we may say, because character is a part of capital and credit, and a day's work is what it is very much by the honest purpose that goes into it. Value is defined to be what a thing will pass for, and it is always and everywhere the relation of mutual purchase established between two services by their exchange. Ownership or property is transferred by the exchange of values, and the persons making the exchange render a specific service according as they exchange a commodity, as a pencil, a personal service, as a day's work, or a claim, as a United States bond, for a supposed equivalent in one of these three classes, or for a commodity, a service, or a claim. This analysis brings us directly to persons, as the central point of the science, and makes things, however essential, subordinate to persons. Value is the relation of mutual purchase established between two services, and price is its purchasing power expressed in money. The one universal law of value is the law of demand and supply: demand being the desire of purchasing something coupled with the power of purchasing it; and supply being any exchangeable thing offered for sale against any other exchangeable thing. Market value is the equation of supply and demand; and the money offered for commodities always constitutes a demand. Exchange is the life of trade, and freedom of exchange secures the final triumph of civilization in its three great struggles for rights of person, opinion, and property. We can only give the gist of the author's science in the briefest terms, and commend his book to all who wish to know the details of his system. He defines production as the getting something ready to sell, and selling it, and he looks upon inventions as increasing production, yet tending to lessen the value of particular services. Labor is physical or mental effort, which demands return in wages, and bad money is worse for wages than profits, but is bad enough for both. All capital is products saved for further use in production. The more capital, the higher the rate of wages and the lower the profits. War destroys capital, communism threatens it, strikes impair it, while peace and good-will reduplicate it. Land is a commodity made such by human efforts; and its sale, its produce, and its rent, come under the ordinary rules of value. Cost of production is the measure of one effort in one class of exchanges, and its two elements are cost of labor and of capital. The author is strong on money, which he distinguishes from all other values in that it is a legal and current measure of services. Gold is the best standard, but silver may be subsidiary, while papermoney is only the promise to pay coin, and not the best money, as a promise may be broken. Credits are rights not yet realized, therefore an important part of economics, and good bankers are great benefactors. Trade should be as free as possible, that all values may be fairly exchanged. Taxation is the topic last treated, and the author favors the taxes that are laid most directly in proportion to the gains of exchanges or the actual value of property. He thinks an income-tax not objectionable in principle, and he is decidedly in favor of reducing our tariff laws to the principle of our internal revenue system, which rests upon low taxes on comparatively few things. Thus we have given a careful outline of this important book, which may have some doubtful statements, but which as a whole is a treasure of learning and good sense, as precious in itself as wholesome in view of the rampant folly of popular fallacies in economics. There is something to be added to Prof. Perry's principles of political economy, for all science opens upon a corresponding art, and the science of values has its art which belongs to its essential principles and gives it the force and beauty which mere analysis lacks. 8.-Deterioration and Race Education. With Practical Application to the Condition of the People and Industry. By SAMUEL ROYCE. Boston Lee & Shepard. New York: Charles J. Dillingham. 1878. 12mo, pp. 585. THE evident earnestness of the author of this volume and the zeal of its benevolent distributor, Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, entitle it to a fair examination. It is surely well worth reading, and it ought to make its mark upon public opinion, while in some respects it deserves the notice of well-informed and thoughtful men. author would have done wisely if he had kept it a little longer on hand and arranged his ample material more thoroughly and pointed his conclusions more distinctly; but his book as it is has great value, and it cannot fail to do good, especially in its bold and strong conflict with the narrowness of our dominant schooling and the rabid radicalism of our labor-reformers. The table of contents is of itself a fair expression of the author's way of mixing many things together without definite classification, and of leaving his reader to trace his way for himself. Ninety topics are named in one continuous list in this table, and the view is quite confused in the reader's mind until he does what we have done-until he takes out his pencil and writes here and there the proper figure from one to eight against the rightful headings, so as to make it appear that there are eighty-two topics to be considered under eight distinct divisions. These divisions or parts are "Race Deterioration," "Heredity," "Kindergarten," "The Progress of Civilization," "The Progress of General Education," "The People and their Homes," "The Scourges of Humanity," "The Need of the Nation," the fifth and the last topics occupying the largest spaces. Yet these various topics are not kept wholly apart from each other, and the author constantly strikes into his favorite ideas, and mixes up the last with the first and the first with the last, while he never fails to make some headway, and he comes out under his own colors at the end. In one respect he is a brave leader, indeed, for with all his plain speeches he is no pessimist, and under the darkest cloud his faith is bright and strong. He seems to start with the idea that the human race on the whole is losing ground and running down, and that this deterioration of the race must be met by a new education that looks to nothing short of race education, alike in physical and moral and intellectual respects. He says in so many words: "The whole of our civilization is a series of life-deteriorating processes. There is not a relation in life but tends toward race deterioration; and like past nations and civilizations we dig our own grave, if we fail to oppose to this degenerating tendency an education which is a persistent system of race amelioration, inspired by the spirit of altruism, the saving genius of the race, and the only possible correction of an age selfish to the core." In other passages he recognizes the progress of the race in our time, as when, in describing the emancipation of mechanical labor from slavery and ignorance, he declares that continuance in this course by closer connection of industry with science and humanity will reduce the mortality of laborers in the land by at least 50,000 and the cases of sickness by 750,000 yearly. In some instances his statistics do not warrant his conclusion, as when he quotes the number of the deaf and dumb, the blind and the insane, in Europe and America, as proof of degeneracy in the race, when these numbers may indicate more accurate reports or more humane and lifepreserving treatment, or in some cases they may be but a repetition essentially of the old story of human sin and suffering. In some respects he is on firm ground in dealing with the degeneracy of our age, as when he points out the dangers of our industrial ways of overcrowding factories and dwellings, and putting women and children to improper or excessive work. One of the best ideas in the volume is thus expressed: "The man who could discover a mode of combining manufacturing skill with isolated labor and country residence would do a greater service to humanity than the whole race of philosophers.” What we miss in this elaborate and honest and wholesome book, which we commend heartily to general attention, is a careful study of the peculiar characteristics of our age and an analysis of its besetting evils; also a philosophical statement of the true race education, with a fair appreciation of physiology and medicine, and a just recognition of the great moral and spiritual convictions that bind man to man in lifting him up to God. The author himself is rightminded, but he is not in all respects master of the social science which he honestly seeks, and he too often mistakes words for things. The great work of Prof. Oettinger, of Dorpat, on "Moral-Statistik," might help him much in the new edition, which we hope to welcome. 9.-Studio, Field, and Gallery: A Manual of Painting for the Student and Amateur, with Information for the General Reader. By HORACE J. ROLLIN. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1878. 12mo, pp. 207. THIS carefully-studied manual of painting meets a decided want of our people, and it is one of the many signs of the progress of art education among us somewhat in keeping with that of scientific education. Heretofore there has been a great difference between art and science in respect to general study. While it has been thought necessary for every well-taught person to know the general principles of science so as to act according to them in the care of health and property and the regulation of life, art has been left mainly to specialists, as if it belonged only to a few professors, and were of no importance to men generally, except perhaps as far as it is needed in order to make them enjoy the luxury of good works of art. There is certainly no good ground for such a distinction, for a well-educated man ought to see the beauty as well as the truth of things, and in all that he does he ought to act with the readiness of touch and the discrimination and taste which artknowledge and practice give. If education enables us to express ourselves properly and fully, surely we need to bring form and color, light and shade, to help out our description; and to paint, draw, and even to model, is but an extension of speech and writing. The use of such art is as constant as conversation or composition; and he who masters the elements of art-expression needs no more to set up to be an original artist than the boy who learns to read and write sets up to be a Homer or Demosthenes. Mr. Rollin has done his best to bring together the main principles and rules of painting, and he has added to these a great deal of useful information as to painters and pictures. He has more value as a patient observer and a diligent collector than as an original thinker. He fails to give us a satisfactory definition of true art, and his list of artists as being either idealists, naturalists, or mannerists, does not set before us the true consummation of the ideal and actual in genuine realism. Yet he has a great deal of sagacity as well as knowledge, and he is, moreover, quite a character in his way of combining wholesome advice with artistic instruction. Our friends of the studio will forgive him for advising them not to paint on Sunday, and not to use liquor, opium, tobacco, or other stimulants and narcotics, so long as he keeps so sharp an eye on other professions, and hints that doctors bury their mistakes underground, and lawyers keep theirs from the light by the law's delay, while the painter's bad work is done in open day. The positive and exact information in this book must commend it to a large circle of readers, and make it very useful in schools. The chapters on color and on effect are spirited as well as thoughtful, and give help to the practical observer of Nature as well as the amateur. 1 |