Contemporary Literature [pp. 362-378]

376 CONTE~t PORARY LITERATURE. [April,
ted service among the poor, which may guide and cheer others in these
pious labors. T/ic Story of Ilie A~osttes, by the well-known author of
"Peep of Day," is a simple and pertinent explanation of T/ic Acts, for children, well illustrated. There are also bea~itiful editions of Dn. J. R. MACDUFF'S TIte Gates of Prajse, and in one volume of his three works, T/ie
4fjnd and ~Vords of:~esiis, t/ic Faithj~it Proniiser, and Aforni'i~ and
A~i~h t U'a tc/i cs.
wORKS ON TillS CURRENCY QUESTION.
D. Appleton & Company publish C~~rrency and Banking, by BoNAMY
PRiCE, Professor of Political Economy in Oxford University, who visited this
country some time ago, and gave several public addresses on these subjects,
particularly as related to the commercial crisis of 1873, its causes and effects.
Similar views are more fully set forth in illis volurne, with more copious application and illustrations in relation to the Bank of England, and the other
monetary institutions and developments in Great Britain. In substance, and
aside of special application to later commercial phenomena, here and abroad,
they reiterate the views advanced in his lectures on tlie principles of currency,
delivered in Oxford, and published in 1869.
On this particular branch of economics Prof. Price has no superior, and
the more carefully he is stud~ed, the more fully will this be seen, ahd the
more clearly will all who have any responsibility in determining practical measures in regard to money, banking, arid currency, understand their duty.
He shows, very conclusively, what ought to be evident to all without such
demonstration, that commercial crises, whatever may be the occasions, incidents, or sequences, arise from a destruction which exceeds the production of
wealth; sometimes from providential visitations, oftener from unproductive
consumption and expenditure in speculative enterprises, or extravagant
living-frequently in all combined. So our late panic was due, in different
degrees, to the inherited waste of an exhausting war, the great fires of Portland, Chicago, and Boston, the immense outlays in premature and unproductive railways, and other public improvements, and, probably, more than
all, to that extravagance of living which infested all classes of society. What
was thus spent is gone; and is not on hand to pay the debts contracted for
it. We have been feeling our way for three years to find on whom this
gigantic loss shall fall. New bankruptcies every week are at once revealing
the secret, and telling us the end is not yet, and that we shall only reach it
when, by industry and its savings, we shall have replaced the wealth that
has been lost.
In regard to our present inconvertible currency, Prof. Price strenously asserts the pnncip~es we have constantly m~intained. The objection to resumption of the coiii standard, that it will increase the burdens of the debtor class,
be rightly holds to b greatly over-rated. But, at the worst, it should be no
bar to resumption. Every change of legislation, demanded by the public
honor and welfare, operates to the immediate prejudice of some class. This
is true of all changes in taxes and imports, indeed, all public improvements.
We never should have had a canal, railway, bankrupt law, or even gas and