proach which was uttered by Galgacus against the Romans, thatthey make a solitude, and call it peace." The evidence of statistics on this point is so clear, that the conclusion is irresistible. In England, only one fifth of the population is engaged in agriculture, while in France at least two thirds, and in the United States more than three fourths, derive their subsistence immediately from the soil. In respect to the ownership of the land, to its division among a greater or smaller number of proprietors, the disproportion between these three countries is even greater. And this enormous, this fatal difference for England is attributable entirely to her aristocratic institutions, her laws of primogeniture and entail. The system which leads to these results is advocated by such economists as Ricardo, McCulloch, Alison, and Chalmers; the great merit of Sismondi is, that he was the first strenuously to protest against it. Their favorite maxim, laissez faire, he interpreted in its true meaning; laissez faire la misère; laissez passer la mort. "What!" he cried, answering Ricardo in a long conversation which they had at Geneva shortly before Ricardo's death; "is wealth, then, every thing? Are men nothing?"

The

It is impossible to do justice to the earnestness with which Sismondi labored and wrote upon this subject, without extending our extracts beyond the proper limits of an article. following is taken from a letter which he wrote after the publication of his Studies in Political Economy.

"It is possible that the self-love of an author may have some share, without my being aware of it, in the earnest thirst I feel to attract the attention of the public; but this thirst seems to me nothing but the feeling of the immense sufferings of humanity,sufferings which we all contribute, without thinking of it, to increase, by a conduct which in its details we figure to ourselves as indifferent. I cry, Take care, you are bruising, you are crushing, miserable persons who do not even see whence comes the evil which they experience, but who remain languishing and mutilated on the road which you have passed over. I cry out, and no one hears me: I cry out, and the car of Juggernaut continues to roll on, making new victims." - p. 455.

We must borrow one paragraph, also, from the conclusion to his History of the French, which he wrote, as already observed, but five weeks before his death.

"My life has been divided between the study of political

economy and that of history; thus the economist must often appear, in this long recital, by the side of the historian; I have endeavoured not to let those lessons be lost which are given by experience, as to what contributes to create and to maintain the prosperity of nations. But above all, I have always considered wealth as a means, not as an end. I hope it will be acknowledged by my constant solicitude for the cultivator, for the artisan, for the poor who gain their bread by the sweat of their brow, that all my sympathies are with the laboring and suffering classes." ―p. 49.

The following extract from his anonymous biographer is interesting, as it shows that Sismondi was no radical, and that he rejected with contempt the silly theories which have recently been broached about a new organization of society, and which have found a few advocates among ignorant and enthusiastic persons in our own country.

"It was painful to Sismondi, after having repudiated the economical theories which England was teaching to France, still to have to repel the different systems which connected themselves with the demand for industrial organization. He rejected in turn the coöperative systems of Owen, the Saint Simonians, and the disciples of Fourier. To attempt to suppress personal interest, and to think that the world can go on without it,' he said to some of them, is sufficiently bold; but to imagine that all the labor of the community, the conducting of all its interests, can be determined at any moment of the day by the plurality of suffrages, is acting like a society of fools.' He accused others of ordering a body to walk, after having taken away all the muscles, all the stimulus of individual interest. They take away from you hope, liberty, family affection,' cried he, sorrowfully, all to make you happy! Alas! there is nothing true in their books but the evil they would remedy."" - p. 43.

The temperate and catholic character of his political opinions, also, appears from a letter which he wrote in the summer of 1835.

"I have not given up any of my youthful enthusiasm; I feel, perhaps, more strongly than ever the desire for nations to become free, for the reform of governments, for the progress of morality and happiness in human society. I hope that I have gained in theory and in experience, if, on the other hand, I have been disenchanted of what I hoped in almost all the men I have known : but this disinganno does not affect the ideas and the sentiments

dear to my heart, because my own flag has never been carried into the midst of the conflict. I am a liberal; still more, I am a republican; but never have I been a democrat. I have nothing in common with that party which alarms you by its violence and its wild theories, any more than with that which is intoxicated with the love of order and furious for tranquillity. My ideal, in respect to government, is union; it is the agreement of the monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical elements; it is the Roman republic, in short, in its best days of virtue and of strength, and not the modern principles, which I do not acknowledge to be principles." p. 452.

The health of Sismondi began to fail in 1840; the disease, a cancer in the stomach, which finally carried him off, caused him intense suffering, but did not interrupt his labors as a historian, or the fulfilment of his duties towards his country. During two years he continued writing the history of France under the anguish of this terrible complaint, which was accelerated in its progress by the troubles that overthrew the constitution of Geneva in 1841." That constitution, as we have seen, he had contributed to make, in 1814, acting with Dumont and others, and aiming to render it as liberal as a wise regard to previously existing institutions, the habits of the people, and the necessities of the times would permit. The radical party found that it was not sufficiently democratic, and, having kept the government in anxiety for a long time, they broke out in insurrection in March, 1841, violently overthrew the constitution, and caused a constituent assembly to be called for the purpose of carrying their political theories into effect. "Sismondi was elected a member of it, and, notwithstanding his state of suffering and weakness, he caused himself to be carried to the place of meeting to defend to the last the old and salutary institutions of his country. Alone he dared to resist the popular torrent, alone he combated the changes proposed by the victorious party." On the 30th of March, 1842, in spite of the alarming state of his health, he pronounced before the assembly the last words that he ever uttered in public. "This impromptu speech, full of goodsense, moderation, and power, was interrupted by painful convulsions, and he was carried home in a state of the greatest exhaustion.”

His only desires, now, were to finish his history, and then "to go to Pescia to die beneath the beautiful sky of Tuscany,

amid the flowers, the fruits, and the trees which he had planted, and with the recollections of the mother who had watched over and matured the promise of his youth." The former hope was accomplished, but the progress of his disease made the fulfilment of the latter impossible. His mind was still vigorous, and his desire and capacity for intellectual labor remained undiminished; but the frail tenement in which the strong spirit was lodged gave evident tokens of approaching dissolution. On the 9th of May, he wrote the last sentence of his history, and during the latter part of the month he drew up a detailed catalogue of his works, which is in some measure an autobiography. On the 8th of June, he corrected the first four proof-sheets of the 29th volume of his history.

“On the 10th, he wrote two letters, one to the son of his old bailiff, at Val Chiusa, to remind him that a small pension which this peasant had engaged to pay to his mother, who was a widow, was due. The other letter, which gave to a Bordelais, employed on a History of the Vaudois, the list which he had asked him for, of the authors which he ought to read, ended with the words of the gladiator to Cesar, Moriturus te salutat. On the 13th, the dying man still corrected proofs. On the 14th, he added a codicil to his will, in which, acknowledging the blessings which Providence had heaped upon him, he surrenders his soul into the hands of God, and begs his wife, and all those who bestowed their affection on him, to see him depart with love, but without regret, as he himself quits this world, and all in it which he held dear.'

"On the 25th of June, he continued lying down, motionless, and without speaking till about one o'clock; then he asked to get up. He was dressed and laid on a sofa, where he remained quiet, and at three o'clock in the afternoon he ceased to breathe." p. 50.

It is not necessary to make any elaborate attempt to draw the character or write the eulogy of such a man, after furnishing even the most imperfect sketch of his life and undertakings. Those who wish to know more of him must seek information from his own writings. But to show the estimation in which he was held in France, even by those who were not the most capable of appreciating such works as his, we may borrow the conclusion of M. Mignet's éloge, read before the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences on the 17th of May, 1845.

"M. de Sismondi is one of those men who have done most honor to literature by the greatness of their labors and by the dignity of their lives. No one has more earnestly considered the duties of intellect. Amiable in his private relations, devoted in friendship, indulgent towards others, severe to himself, endowed with an activity which never at any time relaxed, with a sincerity which never on any occasion belied itself, he possessed in the highest degree the love of justice and a passion for good. With these noble sentiments he has imbued politics, history, social economy; he made these contribute to the cautious progress of the institutions of states, to the instruction and well-being of nations. For half a century he has thought nothing that was not honorable, written nothing that was not moral, wished nothing that was not useful; thus has he left a glorious memory, which will be ever respected. In him the Academy has lost one of its most eminent associates, Geneva one of her most illustrious citizens, humanity one of its most devoted defenders."

p. 24.

ART. III. 1. The Dramatic Works of RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. With a Biographical and Critical Sketch. By LEIGH HUNT. London: Edward Moxon. 8vo.

pp. 153.

2. Speeches of the RIGHT HONORABLE RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. Edited by a Constitutional Friend. London: Henry G. Bohn. 3 vols. 8vo.

THE elegant edition of Sheridan's dramatic works, published by Moxon, betrays one strange blunder, by including the entertainment of The Camp, a feeble farce written by Sheridan's friend Tickell, and altogether unworthy of preservation in any form. The biography furnished by Leigh Hunt possesses little merit beyond an occasional luckiness of phrase and an occasional felicity of criticism. It is written with more than his usual languid jauntiness of style, and with less than his usual sweetness of fancy. Indeed, that cant of good feeling and conceit of heartiness, which, expressed in a certain sparkling flatness of style, constitute so much of the intellectual capital of Hunt's sentimental old age, are as out of place, in a consideration of the sharp, shining wit, the elabo