THREE PHASES OF SCIENTIFIC FINANCE. POLITICIANS in search of a thoroughly scientific account of what Mr. Gladstone has really achieved in finance, and the methods by which he has achieved it, cannot do better than to read a very able and instructive article in the new Fortnightly Review, by Mr. Robert Giffen. The fault of the paper is that in style it hovers a little between a treatise and a sketch, sometimes attempting the impossible in the form of representing a chapter of detailed information and discussion by a paragraph, - a paragraph, of course, too allusive, and resting on supports of knowledge outside the article itself. If Mr. Giffen would expand his article into a volume, he might not only add a very needful supplement to that once useful, but now antiquated book, Porter's Progress of the Nation, but illustrate it with all the resources of an accomplished economist and an acute student of political finance. Even as it is, however, the essay is one of no little value on the principles and tendencies of Mr. Gladstone's financial measures.

From The Spectator, 2 Jan. life, and permanently change their standard of living. This is no doubt a perfectly distinct end from the mere removal of impediments to the natural accumulation and productive use of capital, but it is almost inevitably suggested as the second stage of financial science verges towards its end, i.e., when the nation can feel satisfied that the taxes are so raised as not to shut up or embarrass access to any natural field of productive labour. As the new impulse to production begins, which is due to the abolition of artificial restraints, the poorest class is seen to be rising so fast out of pauperism that the statesman cannot but be struck by the possibility of completing the process almost within a single generation, and so raising a whole class at one heave above those habits which cause pauperism and rest contented with it. To effect this, not only must there be more wealth in the nation and therefore more demand for industry, but also higher tastes and wants amongst the labourers. The former might exist without the latter, nay, might almost advance indefinitely without any corresponding advance in the latter; Mr. Giffen notes carefully the three and here there comes in the third general stages of scientific finance, the stage in aim of a scientific financier to see that the which its object is mainly to bring national newly accumulated wages-fund shall not be revenue well up to expenditure, a stage needlessly debarred from investment in which, under wise and even acute states- those comforts and enjoyments which raise men, necessarily develops into the second the self-respect of the poorest class by stage, because it can attain its object only by any needless taxation of their comforts and developing into the second stage, namely, enjoyments; - that so far as taxation must that in which it is the primary object of the press heavily on them at all, it shall press financier not so much to extract sufficient on their most questionable or even injurirevenue, as so to distribute and review his ous tastes, like the crave for stimulants and taxation as not to embarrass or impede un- sedatives, for spirits and tobacco. Furnecessarily any single branch of human in-ther, such a statesman will see many finandustry, in other words, so to arrange his cial directions in which the agency of the taxes that he forces no artificial change State can really stimulate the progress of in the distribution of capital and labour the proletariat class positively as well as among those productive or distributive op- negatively, and this not only without erations for which there exist the greatest loss, but with gain to the Government, natural advantages. But this second stage as by controlling and regulating the great of development in the financier's science national monopolies of civilization, the can scarcely be matured without the dawn-post, the railway, and the telegraph, by ing of a third aim, distinct both from the giving a Government guarantee to savings' mere extraction of the income needful for the national expenditure and from the careful avoidance of all taxation likely to disturb the natural conditions of productive operations, namely the possibility of raising the whole social status of the proletariat class, and this not merely by preparing the way for more work and giving every opportunity for the accumulation of the new capital on which alone they can be set to work, but also by pressing as lightly as possible on their comforts and enjoyments, so as to open to them a new

banks, and to the insurance against sickness and old age. Of these three great stages in the science of modern English finance, Mr. Giffen assigns the credit of the first and the initiation of the second to the late Sir Robert Peel, but to Sir Robert Peel most ably supported and seconded by Mr. Gladstone; the completion of the second stage and the initiation of the third,

and this at a time when necessity was not the mother of invention, since public opinion had ceased to apply any considerable pressure to the problem of financial

reform, to Mr. Gladstone.

And very ably does he illustrate the intensity of purpose, the fertility of invention, the undaunted courage, which enabled Mr. Gladstone to triumph over what would have been to most financiers the temptation of bringing forward easy budgets,'-budgets with which no one would have cavilled, and which would perfectly have satisfied his chiefs.

realized, how much production was hindered, how much wealth was wasted, how much wealth was never produced which otherwise would have been produced, in consequence of embarrassing and vexatious taxes; and the advantage of extending the movement had thus gained a far stronger hold over his imagination than over the imagination of the nation at large. He had, as Mr. Giffen says, to create that "artifiThere is something even more impres- cial intelligence" by which alone his own sive than Mr. Giffen has brought out in this proposed reforms became possible. He threefold development of modern finance, had to kindle in the nation the same hope from a finance the only fear of which was of vast progress and new resources which not to get enough money, through a fi- he had grasped himself, and to kindle nance the main fear of which was an un- enough for the purpose of enforcing immedue interference with the distribution of diate painful sacrifices on both the middle the capital and labour of the nation, to a and the upper class, like the prolonged infinance the principal fear of which is the come-tax and the new succession duty. needless limitation of the enjoyments and He had to repeat the same effort under needless checks on the expanding tastes of still more disadvantageous circumstances in the people, and which even in some de- 1860, when the expenditure had risen to a partments hopes to make a tax less a con- far higher level, and when yet the mood of tribution for the general necessities of Gov- the public mind, under the spell of Lord ernment than a purchase of valuable imme- Palmerston, was utterly inert and averse to diate privileges at a far cheaper rate than efforts of faith and self-denial. The popany but Government could afford to charge. ular' policy would have been to let well And there is something in this progressive alone and remit taxation, especially the development of financial science especially income-tax, to the extent of the surplus. illustrative of the genius of the statesman Mr. Gladstone had to make the nation feel who has been the means of causing it. We that there were still great and needless fetusually suppose that it is because our Gov-ters on the springs of industry, and still ernment is a popular Government that we have had all this financial reform. But the financial history of the period shows us how false this conception is. The first move, no doubt, the move against the Corn Laws, was popularized by the Anti-Corn Law League, and, so far, Sir Robert Peel may have been said to have been carried over the first great obstacle by a wave of popular feeling. Still, even in his case the great financial instrument by which he was enabled to lighten so much the burden of mischievous taxation, the income-tax, was in the highest degree unpopular. And when Mr. Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853, he had, as Mr. Giffen shows, a very difficult task before him in persuading the country to submit to that tax still longer for the sake of financial improvements the urgency of which was by no means keenly or widely felt. By that time it was not the popular opinion which was urging on Mr. Gladstone, but Mr. Gladstone who was urging on popular opinion. He had seen the real mischief of the old plan of taxation in a way which had taken hold of his imagination. He had begun to realize, as the nation had never

greater and as needless fetters on the means of popular enjoyment and civilization; he had to withstand the pleasures of indolence and the pleasures of expenditure, in order to set the nation free from restrictions of which they did not complain, and give them privileges for which they did not ask. The result has been, we believe, that, by his policy chiefly, the name and idea of government have become popular, where a quarter of a century ago government' was a term of reproach; that through him it has become possible to regard government as the centre of popular life, instead of as the centre of all that was hostile to popular life,-that, in fact, he has at last persuaded the English people to like and trust a Government which for generations they had regarded as at best a necessary evil. Reform Acts may have been essential to give him the motive power by which this change has been accomplished; yet but for Sir Robert Peel and for him, the Government of the Reformed Parliament would still be, as it was in 1842, almost, if not quite, as unpopular as the Government of the old régime.

- The Norwegian felted "cooking-depots," or dining-halls, has been successfully invented by Mr. Corbett at Glasgow, and naturalized at Manchester and other towns, but has hitherto no counterpart in London. The metropolis is scandalously ill-fed, and there are no reasons but those disreputable bugbears ignorance and sloth, why not only Paris, but even Glasgow and Manchester, are better off than London in respect of arrangements for feeding the people. It is not the "working classes" alone that need commissariat reforms; the feeding of the whole tribe of middle-class tradespeople and small professionals is deplorable; and Mr. Riddle's proposal that cooked food, hot, in metal cases, should be delivered by express carts daily at houses where the cooking arrangements might not be of the best, and the time of Materfamilias is engrossed by the children or the shop, though not yet carried out, must have made many mouths water. Macmillan's Magazine.

The Flor

MR. LONGFELLOW IN FLORENCE. ence correspondent of the London News, describing the funeral service in that city in memory of Rossini, tells this story of a compliment to Henry W. Longfellow:

SENSIBLE COOKING. boxes now on sale in Duke-street, Grosvenorsquare, deserve notice. When a leg of mutton is to be boiled, instead of its being kept on the fire for three or four hours (on the good old English method, which wastes fuel and hardens the meat), it is sufficient to keep it boiling for only ten minutes; and when it has been hoiled for that time, the fire is no longer needed, but the saucepan containing the meat is to be inclosed in the felted box till three or four hours later, when dinner-time arrives. The heat in the saucepan is prevented from escaping, as it cannot pass through the non-conducting felt, and the process of cooking therefore goes on gently for hours with no new application of heat. A leg of mutton eaten by the Food Committee is stated to have been quite hot three hours and a half after it was taken from the fire and inclosed in the box, and something was said of another leg which was brought from Paris to London in a Norwegian box without getting cold on the journey. Such boxes are coming into use for the luncheons of shooting parties and picnics, and of persons engaged in business. A gentleman takes with him to his office a small box which looks like an ordinary despatch-box; but it is a Norwegian felted box, which he opens at the time of his meal, and finds to contain hot food. This ingenious contrivance is admirably "The service finished at about one o'clock. suited to the wants of the poor. Every poor As I left the church, and while standing on the woman makes a fire in the morning to boil the flight of steps before descending into the Santa water for breakfast. That same fire may suffice Croce square, my attention was arrested by the to commence the cooking of the good man's din- singularly engaging and intellectual countenance ner, and it may be kept hot for him, in one of of one who had likewise been present to hear the these cheap boxes, under the hedges, while he Requiem. A gentleman perhaps some sixty attends to his work, till the hour for his meal years of age, with silvery locks and beard, acarrives. Hot food is not only more palatable, companied by a lady, a youth, and two young but far more strengthening than cold food. girls, was gazing from the topmost step on the Captain Warren's "Cooker," which is patented crowd in the square as it flowed onwards past by Messrs. Adams, of the Haymarket, is an ad- the statue of Dante. Whilst watching with cumirable contrivance. The food in the patent riosity the human stream before him, he was saucepan, or "cooker," is cooked by the heat himself an object of keen, undisguised, yet reof steam, but without any contact with it. spectful interest to a party of young AngloThere is therefore no dilution whatever, nor any Italian girls only a few steps off. I could overwaste. When the meat is done, the meat and hear one saying to the rest, I am sure it must the gravy together are the exact weight of the be he, he is so like the prints. At length one raw joint. It is cooked in its own juices, so that of the young girls drew near to the lady acits full flavor is retained, and as the temperature companying the silver-haired stranger, and said, does not rise quite to the boiling-point, the fibre Pray excuse the liberty, but is not that Mr. is not rendered hard and indigestible by exces-Longfellow?' To be sure it is,' was the reply. sive heat. The committee will doubtless use Oh, I am so happy I have seen him!' was the great care and patience before judgment is pronounced respecting "the methods of cooking in use among the working classes,' " for the problem is not how to denounce them as wasteful and bad, but how best to improve them. How can the poor be provided with tolerable fireplaces and implements of cooking? One gentleman proposes that a society should be established to distribute iron pots among the poor; but though it would be a happy day that should introduce the French pot au feu to the English poor, it is to be feared that education must advance much further among all classes before such a consummation can be accomplished. The system of

·

instant and spontaneous exclamation: 'that really is a treat; that is worth a great deal more than the Requiem.' The young Anglo-Italian then retreated to rejoin her own party, but her remarks had been communicated both to the American poet and to the two girls whom he was holding by the hand, and with a charming frankness they all came forward and spoke a few words of natural and simple courtesy; there was also a kind shake of the hand, facts which I have little doubt will, throughout the whole lives of those to whom they were addressed, lend a sweeter perfume to the verse of Evangeline and Hiawatha."

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