THE WEALTH OF NATIONS ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR OF ENGLAND
AND AMERICA.
Tan second volume of this excellent edition of the text-book of economical science, contains the whole of the celebrated chapter on Rent, with the digression concerning the value of silver, and the first five chapters of the second book, which treats of the nature, accumulation, and employment of' stock, or as it is now called, capital. From the frequent discussions which have taken place in our columns, the subject of rent must have lost much of its novelty, if not of its interest, to readers of the Spectator ; and the particular views of the new editor have already been stated in the notice of England and America. But though yielding nothing for remark or quotation, the first note in the volume dis- plays in a striking manner the utility of this edition. To the text of ADAM SMITH are appended the entire observations of Ricsano and MILL upon Rent, and such opinions of *Cut.- LOCH as are not contained in these two writers are embodied in the disquisition of the Commentator ; so that the student has collected into a focus all the doctrines of the most authoritative writers upon this important point expressed in thoir own words. Similar praise may be extended to the commentary on the second book. The note to the chapter on Money presents RicAano's plan for a unibrot and secure currency, awl POUI.ETT SCROPE'S fir a measure of value by which gold and commodities shall be balanced against each other, and the test of the value of gold be its general power of purchasing. The opinion of ArCuor.oca and the argunanits of CHALMERS are included in the editor's disquisition on the well-known chapter upon Productive and Unproductive Labour ; and BENTHAM'S Letter to ADAM SMITH On the Discouragemcnt opposed by Laws against Usury to the Pro- gress of I urenti cc Industry, is appended to that on stook lent at interest,—a letter which, had the author lived to revise another edition, would, it is said, have caused him to modify his opinions on the subject. Upon the execution of the additional matter we have little to say more than we have said already when noticing the first volume. The tone of the author still continues calm and subdued, not merely in comparison with his England and America, but with the writers to whom he is now directly opposed; and though sometimes inclined to subject ADAM SMITH to a severer test than he told us in his preface could be applied to the science, his views are always original awl searching, even when their soundness appears questionable. The illustration to the present volume is a portrait of IticAann, engraved by ROLL, after a picture by Jacxsoat ; but we cannot praise very highly the intellectual cha- racter of the head. In one point of view the face looks some- thing like that of the Duke of WELLINGTON, but with more of mass and flesh; in another, there is a sort of smirk upon the counte- nance as if the philosophic stockbroker was chuckling at the discovery of a new hypothesis or a lucky hit.
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