come fo painful as to make him urgent for a renewal of them; and when they are taken off, the discharge of thin matter pours from them. Finding the chalk agree fo well with the other parts, I fprinkled his right hand freely with it, and covered it with the cerate plafters. He felt, as he faid, a little tingling from the application, and wifhed to have the poultice continued to the left hand. I was glad of the opportunity of making this comparative trial, and allowed it to be fo.

"Twelfth day.-Head, neck, and legs much better ;-loins nearly healed. 1 fpeak within bounds, when I fay four fquare inches of skin have been beautifully formed on one leg fince yefterday. I know no term which will give fo good an idea of this procefs as icing over; the extent covered, and the fmooth fhiny appearance being fo like an icy pellicle formed on a fmooth piece of water.

"Fifteenth day. Face and legs mending faft ;-loins well;-his hands completely raw, and bleeding from every point ;-the poultice on the left hand is deluged in thin matter, and this hand is by far the moft painful. The right hand covered with the chalk, although painful, is not nearly fo much fo as the left, and the man is anxious to have the chalk applied to it, which is allowed ;-anodyne continued ;-five grains of calomel at night, and a smart purge to be taken early in the morning.

"Sixteenth day. He has had two copious evacuations from the calomel and purging powder ;-every part better; the left hand much eafier, but the granulations much loofer than the right; they bleed more readily, and are more painful.

"Seventeenth day.-One leg quite skinned over; face and other leg much better.

"Twenty-first day. The face and neck quite fkinned over, except a fmall part of each eye lid, and the nofe; right leg almost healed ;— right hand fkinned over from above the wrift to the ends of the fingers on the infide, and much better on the back part ;-left hand, to which the poultice had been fo long applied, begins to grow better, but is far behind the other. fo as to give a molt decided preference to the chalk. He is now fo well that I have allowed him to go into his garden

"You fee, my dear fir, that 1 have been tedically circumftantial in my account of this cafe. I now deem my patient fo near well, that I fhall difcontinue my jerrnal; and I have only to add, that I have been fo particular in the recital of the treatment, because perhaps you may have no cafe which furnithes fuch a fair opportunity for comparing your method with others commonly used. The poor fellow had felt the old method with oil, &c. and was therefore well enabled to appreciate the prefent plan, especially as he is a man of great refolution, and of ftrong natural fenfe. You have alfo had frequent opportunities of feeing him during the cure, and of convincing yourself of the truth of every circumftance. And I think the trouble you have had in refcuing this important branch of practice from the rude hands who fo long held it, will be well repaid, were it only with the reflections this cafe will give you.-As a memento of my sense of the obligations the profeffion have to you, and to fhew, as my poor patient fays, there

was

was ne bairn's play in this barn, I will beg your acceptance of a prepatation I have made of the skin and nails.

"There ftill remain fome parts to heal in the above cafe, and I have no doubt Mr. H. will fee, in the fubfequent part of the cure, the benefit of cathartics.-I have a pleafure in adding the opinion of Mr. Nelfon, of Chester-le-Street, in the county of Durham, who has had very extenfive practice in burns in the collieries on the river Wear :he fays, when the fores have taken upon themfelves the ulcerous difpofition, nothing but repeated purging at due intervals has fucceeded in enabling him to finish the cure."

P. III.

ART. X. A Letter to the Right Hon. William Pitt, on the Influence of the Stoppage of Jues in Specie, at the Bank of England; on the Prices of Provifions and other Commodities. By Walter Boyd, Efq. M. P. 8vo. 112 pp. 3s. 6d. Wright.

1800.

IN N the prefent feafon of distress, every projector applies himfelf to discover fome extraordinary or unnatural caufe for the high price of provifions. One afcribes it to the avarice of the great farmer, who hoards his corn, and propofes therefore to fix a certain price. This has been the cry of every age, when grain fold at a high rate. Shakspeare has brought to the gate of hell, "a farmer who had hanged himself on the expectation of plenty"; yet there were in his time few overgrown or opulent farmers, and not many large farms. The combinations of jobbers and corn-factors were fuppofed in former times, as they are now, to have raised the price to an unreasonable height; though the very laws made to reprefs them, prove the impoffibility of furnishing a general and equal fupply without that clafs of dealers; and, moft abfurdly fuppofe, that the bufinefs would be better managed if it were engroffed by a few licenfed brokers, than if it were open to the fair competition of all.

The war is another caufe of high price, which prefents itfelf to the imaginations of all who profefs to be enemies to war; though, if the evidence of experience may be trufted, war,

*Macbeth, at ii, scene i.

whatever

whatever other evils may attend it, has a direct tidency to reduce the price of grain. The increase of population has alfo been affigned as a caufe of the fcarcity, and confequent high price of grain; though, undoubtedly, the augmentation of the price, fince 1798, is by no means equal to any fuppofed number of children who can have come into exilence, or grown up to maturity, fince that period, when corn was cheap.

The country banks, which many people diflike, have been, in their turn, charged with the production of this evil, by the fupport they give to every perfon-farmer, inilier, or jobberwho may be poffelfed of corn; and who, by means of their potes, is enabled to with-hold it from the market.

Mr. Walter Boyd, who is a man of confiderable ingenuity in matters of fpeculation, has come forward, firft, in defence of the country banks, for whofe fpeculations he feems to have fome tendernefs; and, fecondly, with an attack upon THE BANK OF ENGLAND (whofe condu& he avows to have always difliked) afcribing to the actual amount of their notes in circulation the prefent high price of provifions.

To lower the credit of the Bank of England may by fome be thought not very confiftent with the indulgence of this author for the country banks, which depend upon it. Others may obferve, that the reasoning which he now advances on the fubject of money and credit, is totally repugnant to his own "project of the 5th of April, 1795." Leaving to others the difcuffion of the remaining parts of this pamphlet, we shall confine ourfelves to examine that main propofition, which meets us at the introduction and the clofe: "That the prefent amount of bank notes, by the return to the House of Commons 15,450,970l. is an increase of paper-money, beyond what the circulation of the country requires and can abforb." Nor, in examining this propofition, fhall we have recourfe to any other proofs (though there are many) except thofe which Mr. Boyd himfelf has exhibited in this very pamphlet, and particularly in the note D.

It will not certainly be denied, that the circulating medium in a country muft be increafed in proportion to the number of exchanges which must take place in it; or, in plainer words, in proportion to the increafe of its imports and exports, and its interior commerce. Mr. Boyd, who concurred in the refolutions of the 2d of April, which cenfured the conduct of the Bank in diminishing the iffue of its notes, at that period of inCicafed commerce, will not controvert this propofition. He indeed admits it in the outfet of his note D; but fays, that no man will be hardy enough to maintain, that the increase of the national debt, and of the imports and exports within the laft four years, can be confidered as evidence of a fimilar increase

in every branch of the national induftry. It would, however, be more idle than hardy, if any one fhould undertake to maintain a propofition fo vague in itfelf, and fo inapplicable to the main argument.

The increase of the national debt demands, of course, a sufficient number of bank notes to pay the increafed dividends, which are always paid in that currency. The increase of exports and imports proves that the discounts must be more extenfive, and confequently that it is probable, though not certain, that there muft, for that purpose alfo, be more bank notes in circulation. The evidence, that every branch of nationa! industry has increased, must be fought elfewhere; though fome prefumption that the fearch will not be fruitlefs, may be found in the increase of exports and imports. As to a fimilar increafe, if by that is meant an equal increafe, it will not easily be found in every branch of induftry; because many branches of internal industry are flow in their procefs, and do not require much increase of the circulating inedium.

Agricultural operations, and the extenfion of the communication of the country by roads or navigations, afford fome evidence of the increase of other branches of national industry; and an additional evidence is drawn from the increase of buildings. In the last four years, to which Mr. Boyd has confined his question (though it will appear, in the fequel, that the period ought to have been extended at least to the year 1793) about three hundred acts have paffed for the inclosure and drainage of at least three millions and a half of acres; a number, far beyond that of any former period. Navigation and road-bills have increafed in a very large proportion; and the increase of buildings, for public and private ufe, befides two vaft docks in the metropolis, are symptoms vifible to every unprejudiced eye.

Our object, however, is not to raife fpeculation against speculation, and to reafon upon uncertain grounds. We shall, therefore, after this flight notice of the vague statements in the note D, proceed upon the fingle poftulatum of a propofition admitted by Mr. Boyd; " that the circulating medium of a country must increase in proportion to the extent of its exchanges"-to prove, against him, that the prefent extent of bank notes is not greater than the circulation of the country requires.

The average circulation of bank notes for three years, ending in 1793, was 11,500,0431. The average imports and exports, for the fame period, was 42,404.410l. The commercial diftrefs in 1793, and the refult of the meafure by which it was relieved, proves that the circulation was then infufficient.

The

The average circulation of bank notes, for the next three years, was 11,844,2161. an addition only of; totally inadequate even to the former amount of trade. But the average

imports and exports of this period increafed to the fum of 50,867,8181. hence the ftagnation in February, 1797. The last return of bank notes is 15,450,970.

The average imports and exports, for three years, ending in 1799, amounts to 59,129,0461.

Admit the circulation for the first period to have been adequate, though it undoubtedly was deficient in a very great degree, the question is, what ought to be the proportional increase of circulation, to the increase of imports and exports in the last period? If 42,204,410!. requires 11,500,0431. what will 59,129,0461. require? The answer is 16,112,5841.

The actual circulation therefore is below the fum required by 661,970l. which, upon the whole circulating medium, is fomewhat above one twenty-fifth lefs than the fum which might have been added to it, in due proportion to the issue of bank notes in 1793. But it must be allowed, that the amount of the bank notes, in 1793, was inadequate to the circulation, which at that period the commerce of the kingdom required.

The amount of that deficiency may, with very reasonable certainty, be known by the fupport which government then gave to commercial credit, which in truth was nothing more than an extenfion of the iffue of bank notes, through the medium of Exchequer bills. The Bank itself might, with the fame advantage, have performed the fame operation, by increafing its difcounts.

The whole fum advanced by government was 2,129,200l. all repaid (after every expence of an extraordinary commiffion defrayed) with a fmall profit. The alarm, from a want of circulation, had been fo general, that a fum of five millions had been thought neceffary to provide for the exigence.

The actual demand, in the first moment, did not much exa ceed three millions and a half; of which the unwarrantable claims did not amount to 400,0col. and had the Bank, in the due exercife of its own difcretion, in admitting or rejecting difcounts (to which it was at least as competent as the commiffioners named by government) iffied a fum equal to that which, without any lofs, was advanced by the public, it may be prefumed, that the diftrefs of credit would not have arifen, and the Bank would have gained the discount.

This tranfaction proves, that the ftate of commerce in the country, in 1793, required and would have abforbed a circulation, to the extent at least of two millions beyond the 11,500,000!. it then poffeffed in bank notes.