of a generation, comparatively few even of the non-commercial classes would be serious sufferers. In proportion to the length of time over which the depreciation extends will be the limitation of its evils to the very few, though not unimportant, interests which must inevitably suffer, let it take what time it will; and even their misfortunes I will be alleviated if their loss be gradual and not sudden. The Setting aside commercial contracts, which generally involve liabilities extending only over a short period of time, there is a considerable mass of engagements which last for several years, and the effect of which will be materially altered by a depreciation of the monetary standard. The landlord who has let his farm on a lease for twenty-one years will, if a depreciation of twenty per cent. should be effected in fourteen years, find himself receiving for the last seven years only four-fifths of the return he expected the money-rent remaining nominally the same. mortgagee of that landlord is in a still worse position. Should the depreciation be complete before the period of his mortgage has expired, he will not only have received in interest a smaller value than he calculated upon, but the sum which he originally lent will be returned to him worth less by a fifth than when he lent it. The latter liability attaches to the man who has insured his life for a fixed sum; but he has the advantage of paying his premiums in a gradually depreciating currency, and has therefore lost only a portion of the difference between the value of the £1000 for which he insured at the times of contract and of fulfilment. Exactly inverse to this is the case of the annuitant, who has paid at thirty-five £1000 for a yearly annuity of £60 or thereabouts, and finds at sixty that his little income is worth only fourfifths of what it once was. But a greatly protracted period of slow depreciation would considerably mitigate these evils, inasmuch as comparatively few contracts are now entered into which will not be completely fulfilled before the end of a quarter of a century; and if the process of de preciation proceed but slowly, it will only be those who have entered into contracts involving the receipt of money very many years hence who will be serious losers. Commerce and business will gradually adjust themselves to the gradually changing value of money; wages and prices will rise as slowly as that value falls, and the evil effects of the depreciation in their extremest form will affect but a few classes. There is, however, one way in which a good many persons, who may at first sight seem in a tolerably safe position, will prove sufferers to some degree by the change. I speak of those who depend not on fixed incomes, but on the wages of labour, but whose wages are determined by custom, not by competition. It requires a little reflection perhaps to assure us how numerous these persons are. I will take one or two instances. The fees of physicians and barristers are determined by custom. Competition among them does not cause them to accept lower remuneration in order to get more work: the etiquette of their profession and the social usage, which are enormously powerful even in England, forbid it. All that competition can do is to divide the work and the pay among a greater number of claimants. In the same way a fall in the real value of their wages will not for a long time affect the custom which fixes the nominal amount. When gold shall be worth only four-fifths of its present value, we shall still give only a guinea to our physician; and the fee marked on the barrister's brief will not be increased from two guineas to two and a half, or from four guineas to five. Similarly, it is probable that the prices paid for many services which are now remunerated on an understood scale, as is the case with a great part of the intellectual labour of the country, will not rise in any degree until long after those prices have become less valuable than they are now. When wheat shall be at 50s. a quarter instead of 40s., and when silver shall be worth one-twelfth, and not one-fifteenth as much as gold, the clerk will stili enter one government office at a salary of 1859.] The Case of the English Fundholders. £75, and another at a salary of £100. The curate will still find his stipend £100, and not £125. I doubt whether even newspaper articles will not be paid just at their present rate, and bankers' clerks receive just their present salary. It is so now in some cases. The customary pay of a juryman is still -if it be ever now received-the eightpence or a shilling a day which once repaid the labour and time bestowed on his duties by the farmer or shopkeeper. In no other case probably would the effect of custom be so enduring; but in all those I have enumerated, and in many besides, it may last long enough to produce considerable inconvenience and injustice. There is one class who are certain to suffer, however slowly the depreciation may proceed, in all States which have a gold currency-the creditors of the State. They are in the position of perpetual annuitants. They will lose something, more or less, while the depreciation grows more and more; and when it is complete, they will have lost for ever a portion of the value of their property. Here is a real injustice; not because they take their fair chance with others, investing in the funds on speculation, as in any other property, trusting to a fair calculation of its probable value; but because many of them have been forced by legal conditions to invest in this manner, whether they liked it or no. The practice of the Court of Chancery is, I am told, to refuse to indemnify trustees against the loss they may sustain by unlucky investments of the property entrusted to them-no matter how prudently and honestly they may have acted-unless they have invested in the Funds. If they make choice of any other investment, they do so at their own peril. A compulsion is thus exercised in favour of the public debt, grounded on regard for the interest of the ward, which becomes a grievous injury to him if the property is to be depreciated meantime by a fall in the value of the standard metal. If the property of a child now a year old be thus invested in the funds, and if in twenty years gold shall have fallen in value ten per cent., then VOL. LIX. NO. CCCLIV. 743 though he may, on attaining his majority, receive the same nominal sum, he has really been robbed of one-tenth of the value of his property by the sanction and under the authority of the State, which gains the benefit of his loss. This seems a hard case. It may be answered that the other investments which might have been sought, had no such intervention been made by the legal authorities, are equally liable to depreciation from the same cause. But this is not quite true. Let us consider one of the most popular investments-railway shares. As these represent property dependent for its value upon considerations in no way affected by a change in the value of gold, their nominal price will rise, as that declines, just as the price of corn or cotton goods. The same will be the case with other investments of this nature; with all, indeed, which do not represent, or are not liable to be paid off by, a fixed sum of money. The case of the English fundholder, then, under a depreciation in the value of gold, is such as fairly to entitle him to the favourable consideration of the State. At the same time there can be no doubt that not only in law, but even in foro conscientia, our strictly binding obligation is limited to the repayment of the amount of standard money which we promised to repay, or to the continued payment of that rate of interest, in standard money, which was the condition of the loan. And unless the depreciation of gold should be sudden and striking, so as to enlist strong pub. lic sympathy on behalf of the sufferers, there is little chance that the statesmen who have charge of the public interests will consent on behalf of the public to forego the advantage they may honestly—even if not quite honourably-reap by the possible variations of the mar ket. Only a very forcible and rapid decline in the value of gold would be in the least likely to induce us even to take into consideration th remedy proposed by M. Chevalier the alteration of our standard from gold to silver, and the payment of our debts in the undepreciated metal. Honesty does not bind us 3 с to it; and we are hardly likely to err on the side of over-generosity towards the public creditor. The case of France is different. Silver is her standard; and though the law allows her, if she please, to pay her debt in gold at a fixed rate, yet I agree with M. Chevalier in thinking that those who lent a thousand francs-or let us say five thousand grammes of silver-have a right to receive the same in return; and not in lieu thereof a quantity of gold once worth as much, but when they receive it worth only four thousand grammes of silver. The double currency' is in fact, on occasion of a depreciation in either of the metals, an instrument by which the debtor may profit, to the detriment of the creditor; and the State, which was guilty of the oversight that rendered such an injustice possible, has at least no moral right to make its own advantage of its own wrong.' Those who wish to see this point fully reasoned out had better refer to the treatise I have already so often quoted. The financial obligations of France will there be found more fully discussed than it is necessary to discuss them here. To recapitulate in a few words. It seems that, though there has been as yet no perceptible decline in the value of gold, such a decline must be expected ere long, though no prudent writer will undertake to predict its exact extent or duration. But we have a right to hope that it will be so gradual as to prevent the infliction of ruinous losses on individuals, and the disturbance of commercial credit, which must occur from a sudden depreciation. Certainly, the experience of the eight years which have elapsed since the last of the great gold discoveries, while it has warned us against the expression of any hasty judgment on the possibilities of the future, has taught us to look much more calmly and with much less alarm on the effects of the mighty increase in our supplies of gold which is taking place than those could do who were first startled by the prospects of financial derangement which seemed to threaten us when those discoveries took place. Eight years with an annual supply of from twentyfive to thirty-five millions, and no mischief done, may tend in some degree to tranquillize our minds in regard to future contingencies. PERCY GREG. A THE ROMAN QUESTION: THE POPE-HIS CHURCH, VERY remarkable work has just appeared at Brussels, by M. About, author of a volume called La Grèce Contemporaine, published about four years ago. M. About, a Frenchman by birth and education, brought up at the Lycée Charlemagne, unlike some of his countrymen who write about Italy from the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, has studied the Roman question from an actual point of view, in the States of the Church itself. It was on the very ground of Rome, as well as at Bologna, at Civita Vecchia, and at Rimini, that he picked up his information and collected his facts. His first impressions, written freshly as they occurred, appeared some months ago in the Parisian Moniteur Universel, with such changes and modifications as the editor of the French Government journal imposed. His articles, somewhat desultory and fragmentary, were nevertheless truthful and impartial-so truthful, indeed, as to provoke violent remonstrances on the part of the Pontifical Government. The consequence was that the clever writer, though backed by the patronage of the greatest personage in the State, was forced suddenly to suspend his labours in reference to Rome, the Pope, the Cardinals, and the States of the Church. The Papal nuncio at Paris, the sleek Sacconi, exhibited a diplomatic and episcopal dissatisfaction to the French authorities; and his secretary, the Abbé Compieta, did not fail to proclaim in ultramontane *La Question Romaine. Par E. About. Bruxelles: Meline, Cans et Cie. society the scandal caused to all truly devout Romanists by these Voltairian sketches, so sparkling with wit, humour, and that mocking irony before which even truth itself sometimes, and for a season only, fares second best. Nor was this by any means the worst of it. The Archbishop of Nicea, acting on behalf of his spiritual father, the Pope, had roused the five French cardinals, the Archbishops of Besançon, Bordeaux, Bourges, Rheims, and the most ultramontane Lyons, and of the bishops, vicars-general, and priests in the west and south of France, to a common feeling of anger and complaint. Here were five cardinals, fifteen archbishops, sixty-five bishops, hundreds of deans and archdeacons, and about fifty thousand priests, and a vast number of Jesuits, lay brothers, nuns, and religious women, all at once set in motion to influence every religious or seemingly religious household in France. Allusions were made to the harsh conduct of the first Napoleon towards Pius VII.; and the Home Minister was warned that it would fare ill with any French Government which could countenance attacks on the Vicegerent of God on earth. To these passionate assertions, urged with priestly perseverance, M. Delangle was not wholly insensible; and M. About was told by the Minister that he must write no more on Rome, the Pope, the Cardinals, or the congregation of the Propaganda, at least in the Government Moniteur. The articles which had already appeared had, however, greatly piqued public curiosity, and pleased the most intelligent portion of the reading and thinking public in France. Testimonies to this effect crowded on the gifted author from all sides; and as the situation of Italy grew more uneasy, urgent, and unquiet, M. About determined to devote himself to the production of a special book on Rome, the Roman Question, and the States of the Church. retouched his notes, he revised his reminiscences, he consulted statistical volumes, he conversed and corresponded with illustrious Italians He 745 in and out of Italy, and the result manship is the volume now before of all this thought, labour, and pen us. in Belgium in the first days of May The first edition was published -a country in which there exists nearly as much freedom of the press as in England; and this imprint was exhausted in a very few days without satisfying half the people in Paris, who would be satiated with the work under any circumstances. A question then arose whether the volume might not be printed in lisher. The Council of State sate on France by some independent pubthe subject and decided in the of May the partisans of the Pope negative, so that on the 5th or 6th and his bad government thus felicitated themselves that the volume could not appear in France; but in Italy, the Emperor of the French the last moments, before leaving for decided that the work should be also published in Paris as well as admitted from Belgium, so that the Parisians will have the opportunity of reading as clear and pungent prose against the Papacy printed both in Belgium and in France as Micromégas first saw the light some has been written since Candide or hundred and thirty years ago.* It is not that M. About has any self; on the contrary, he feels kindly personal spite against the Pope himtowards a man aged and infirm, whose private life is exemplary, and who practises self-denial and disinfigured by selfishness and corrupterestedness on a throne often distion. The French critic admits that Pius IX. commenced his reign by acts favourably regarded by Italydays, doomed to be subsequently acts which gave a hope of better disappointed. But while lamenting the sufferings of the Pontiff in exile at Gaeta, and the moral tortures which his Holiness must have suf fered in exercising a precarious and tection of two princes, M. About dependent royalty under the procontends that there are thousands of the Pope's subjects whose position is a million of times more deplorable than that of the monarch, owing to the weakness and wickedness of the * While these sheets are passing through the press, we learn the volume has, on the denunciation of the Editor of the Univers, been seized in Paris. Pontiff's government. This is a government administered certainly in the Pope's name and under his authority, but of many of the iniquities and oppressions_practised under it it is hoped the Pope himself is personally ignorant. a Pius IX. has now just entered upon his sixty-eighth year, having been born on the 13th May, 1792; but he looks older than his real age, being of delicate health, and feeble constitution. M. About describes him as a short stout little man, with pasty cheeks and somnolent look. His countenance indicates good feeling and a certain lassitude, his Holiness having no commanding traits. The predecessor of the present Pontiff, Gregory XVI., was a plain, nay, a downright ugly, man, with blotched and pimply face; but ugly as he was, he played his part well in spiritual shows, exercises, and spectacles. Pius IX. is, on the contrary, a very sorry performer in these magnificent representationsthe great and often too successful religious melodramas of the Romish church. The faithful who travel long distances to hear his Holiness's masses are surprised to see him take pinches of snuff at the very moment when the Thurifer covers him with an azure cloud of odorous frankincense. When mass is over, the Pope it appears plays at billiards, it is said by order of his physicians. He is, says the Frenchman-as though the fact were wonderful-a believer in God. He is not merely a sincere but a devout Christian. In his enthusiasm for Mariolatry he has invented, it is true, a useless and silly dogma, but en revanche, he has testified his sincerity in raising a monument to the Miraculous Conception, certainly in the worst taste -a monument which still unhappily disfigures the Piazza di Spagna. The moral character of Pius IX. is above reproach, and was so even in his youthful days as a subdeacon, deacon, and parish priest. This purity of conduct in Romish ecclesiastics is common enough in France, but very rare indeed in the States of the Church, where morality is the exception not the rule. The present Pope has nephews, who, miraculous to tell, are neither rich nor powerful, nor yet titled; and this is the more wonderful as no law whatever interdicts the Pontiff from levying black mail on his subjects for the benefit of his own particular family. of Gregory XIII., for instance, gave to his nephew, Ludovisi, four millions of good paper money, quite equivalent to solid specie; and the Borghésés purchased eighty considerable farms with the money of Paul V. Nothing therefore prevented the present Pope, even according to the commission appointed in 1640, and presided over by Vitelleschi, general of the Jesuits, from creating a majorat £16,000 a year on behalf of a favourite nephew, or a secundo geniture in favour of a second nephew, or even to pay over a dowry of £36,000 to a too indiscreetly loved niece or daughter, if he had such child, of which there is no evidence whatever. But Pius IX. has not followed the example of the Gregorys or Pauls, or of his own namesake Pius VI., in this respect; and though his family are of no great rank, and are poorish in point of fortune, yet he has done nothing whatever to better their position. His nephew, the Count Mastaï Ferretti, married recently, and all that the Holy Father did for him was to give his young wife diamonds to the value of £8000 of our money. And even this liberality cost not a sou to the Roman nation. These diamonds were a present from the Sultan of the Sublime Porte to the Pope on his election in 1846; and what remained of them after the spoliations of Gaeta and Portici, were offered as a marriage gift to the young Countess of Ferretti, the Pope's niece-in-law. This is to the honour and credit of the man Pope. The character of Pius IX. is (according to our author, from whom we have gathered all this detail) an amalgam of devotion, good nature, vanity, weakness, and obstinacy, dashed and brewed' with a spice of bitterness and rancour. Though his Holiness gives his benediction with unction, he is not placable, and does not very easily forgive. A good priest enough, he is an indifferent and incapable sovereign. He |