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No. 426, May. 22, 1S58.J _ _ T Hj _ JLEJ...
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' FRENCH FINANCE A.ND FINANCIERS. French...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Country Lif.E In Plklmont. Country Life ...
scrintions of cottages and fields , roads and pnstures , valleys and village wardens and fovest ' seclusions , iustiiy , it is true , the title of the volume ; but the writer has an intention beyond that of celebrating landscapes and rural manners , llis varied and amusing letters , therefore , abound in reduction upon Fiedmontcse society , and upon that of Italy in general , though M . G ;» llen <* a does not inform us how far" his personal experience has spread . With excusable partiality he represents the Piedinontese as the type of the Italians , the hardiest and the bravest of the race—a statement which Venice , Rome , and Milan may well deny , and which Novara will not sanction , although the Teheniitya wiped out the stain of that inglorious engagement—and he attributes tliis superiority , in part , to the quality of the food
eaten upon the . sub-Alpine plain , and even by the mountaineers . But he dep icts this noble 'being as morally degenerate , ant ] , among other philosophical explanations ,- introduces an invective against tobacco . The practice of smoking , in M . Galleuga ' s eyes , is a vice , almost a crime , and we must gay that his argument is somewhat weakened by the obvious violence of . Ins prejudices , lie appears to entertain the strongest possible personal views , and when the name of any public man occurs it is sure'to be accompanied by qualifying language of . no-ambiguous character . Thus , though the preface promises a total absence of political allusion , sucli allusions are not wanting , and " the rabid opposition" in the Turin Chambers is freely , if cursorily , denounced .
By M . Gallenga ' s inadvertencies , however , we must not be led to treat this book from a political point of view . It is chiefly a picture of Picdmontese provincial life , the author ' s observation radiating generally from Castellamonte , about twenty-two miles from the capital , though he occasionally digresses to -describe- the social fashions of his metropolis . Gossiping cleverly , and with little reserve , he catalogues the sins of the people , and sums up to a very heavy total . -TLey have a coarse contempt , in the first place , for the beauties of nature . Their houses are dingy and tawdry . They waste their land in the formation of broad and bad roads . They smoke and expectorate like JSTew Englanders . They eat trash , though not to such an extent as . the .. Lombard or the Neapolitan . They have a poor literature , and appreciate no other . They are a worn-out nation . And yet , IM . Gallenga says , there is no slight poetry in the humbler
and more homely life of Piedmont . The inhabitants of the country ai-e hospitable , simple , and modest .. " There is harmony , loveliness of affection , such as is utterly unknown in proud -England . " Much that is said concerning the immorality of Italian women is false , he affirms , oi- applies only to the countesses and duchesses who paint the lily and gild the gold of nature at the Grand-Ducal Court of Florence , or to " the - . scarlet adventuresses of Papal Rome . " The middle and lower-ranks of Northern Italy are pastoral in their chastity . But why not be externally clean without as we'll-as pure within ? A country . hostelry in Piedmont , M . Gallenga complains , is the paradise of dirt and disorder , grease , noise , and tobacco . In winter , the land is visited by a-fierce cold season , and the people are so improvident that they are bm-ning up all their fuel , hewing the forests from their mountains , leaving their plains naked , and carrying on that woodman's ravage which
bus desolated the central parts of Spain , robbed of tlieir ancient fertility the hills of the Peloponcsutf , reduced u the forest of Carmel" to a jungle , and rendered M . Laplace anxious for the future of France , and the Marquis de Custine for that of ltussia . M . Gallenga does . not exaggerate when he points to the reckless and improvident ' destruction of Piedmontese forests with reprobation and alarm . At the same time , ha represents the agriculture of the country to be at a very low ebb , scarcely one-sixth so productive as that of England . Taking the whole territory together it produces only two-thirds of the bread requisite for the sustenance of its ^ population , which is ' in . an inverted ratio to the fertility of the soil . For , while the broad arable plains are almost a blank , dotted at wide distances with closelybuilt towns and villages , and rare straggling farm-houses , the hill sides and the valleysup the bleakest cliils and crags are crowded with human habitations . It is in the level lands that agriculture is deficient and clumsy , the population being scanty , and still clinging to the national habit which
induced the husbandmen generally , and the landowners always , to live away from the plains . M . Gallengu ' s chapters in connexion with this subject , as well as those on labour , on the ricdmonte . se proprietary system , on water and irrigation , on woods and woodmen , are of curious interest . From these topics he turns to manufacturing industry , especially to spinning and weaving , processes carried on in almost every Piedmontese valley and village . ' Beyond the mere spinning , however , the Italians have made as yet but little progress . " Suggesting an improvement and development of the manufacture , and enumerating the natural facilities enjoyed by Piedmont , M . Gallenga adds , u 1 have heard intelligent manufacturers in England state that the advantage which the cheapness of water power has over industry carried on by means of steam-engines is almost counterbalanced by the dilliculty ami expense of carriage inseparable from , the mountainous districts in which water power abounds ; but in Piedmont this dilliculty i . s already , 'to a great extent , and may be eventually altogether , overcome . Every valley in Piedmont opens upon a plain as level and smooth as a billiard-table . "
\\ e are glad to observe that JVJ . Gallenga has much to . say in praise of the working classes throughout Italy , for although from a writer so absolutely prejudiced and so addicted to generalize , any statement must bo . received wilh caution , there is enough in his volume to show that he has btudieil to good purpose the character and manners at least ofthc Piedmont ese . In his chapter on their domestic economy many details me collected which will probably be aiew to most English readers . Here again is an excess of vituperation against the . smokers , but this is M . Gallenga ' s weakness ; and constitutional ainipnthies are among those human frailties which are very easily pardoned . It is more diilieult nut to question JM . ( Jallenga ' s privilege whou ' he admires the condescension oi' a favourite statesman in witling in the . same cup with M . Lorenzo Valerio , or when from an extreme height he comments upon his native literature . With whnt asperity his criticism on other poinus iseoncwvea a Binglo passage will show . Relerrii . g to the perpetual consumption ll < lmd and paste , and to the poverty of niter-dinner orations in . Italy , ho suys , ± ho Italians arc not only too mercurial , as people ussori , buL they
are too desperately addicted to gormandizing , they are too heavily crammed , too torpid after dinner , to sit out any lengthened display of oratorical powers ; they want air and exercise after their full and over-hasty meals . it is only by another strange popular fancy , analogous to the hallucination , which describes their climate as that of Uden , that they are represented as a sober and abstemious people . ' * Theymay not be addicted , he admits , to drinking , as the English of the best classes were wont to do in former times ; they may not require five or six meals a day , such as the Germans indulge in ; " but I appeal to any traveller , who ever happened to take his dinner at the inbin il'liolc of the Hotel Fcder at Turin , or to sup at the Cafe Feder at Milan , to bay if anything can well be more appalling than the amount of stuff an Italian—at least , a North Italian—will manage to swallow a . t one sittino-. " The inference is , that the nation is unfit for real convivial enjoyment . Whatever may be the controverted points upon which M . Gallenjja rashly . dogmatizes , Country Life in . Piedmont is a most entertaining book , and is very pleasantly written .
No. 426, May. 22, 1s58.J _ _ T Hj _ Jlej...
No . 426 , May . 22 , 1 S 58 . J _ _ T Hj _ JLEJl D , EB . " 499
' French Finance A.Nd Financiers. French...
' FRENCH FINANCE A . ND FINANCIERS . French Finance and Financiers under Louis XV . By James Murray . Longman and Co . There is no preface to this volume , and Mr .. Murray ' does not explain how long it has been in completion . We are , therefore , _ unable to infer how far it has been suggested by the actual financial condition of the French Empire , by the workings of the Credit Mobilier , or by the other desperate experiments and expedients which seem to revive the latter days of the Bourbon monarchy . It appears to have been a work of elaboration and research , and yet so numerous and striking are the analogies suggested between the fiscal embarrassments of Louis Quinze and those of Louis Napoleon , that it would almost seem that Mr . Murray has "written in . direct'historical
illustration of the process by which states are forced by their governments into revolution , and of which an example is now presented by the Imperial administrators of France . If it be true that history never repeats itself , it is equally true that despotism has been everywhere and in . all ages the same , and that the power which acknowledges no responsibility to public opinion-invariably leans upon rotten artifices , and fills up one abyss simply by creating another . The financial annals of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth are marked by more than one series of events dramatic in their Origin and development , by . ' the career of John Law , and of the brothers Paris and Belle Isle , by the tampering of the King ' s parasites and mistresses ¦ with the treasures of . the state , and by a multitude of scandals which , while intrinsically essen ^ tial to the clearness and fulness of the general narrative , relieve it from the dulness common to financialTiistories . Such dulness is at ' all times the
characteristic of the writer rather than of the subject , lhe story of the British Exchequer might be a very fascinating book . " .. - .- ¦ Mr . Murray , following out the connexion between royal and noble influence and private intrigue , and the vicissitudes of the French revenue during the period under review , has produced . a volume which is thoroughly readable and interesting , while it is , at the siune time , a large and sound exposition of fiscal doctrine , as exemplified , in one form or another , by the transactions which took place hi - J ? rajice from the establishment of the regency to the death of Louis the fifteenth . During the -whole of that period experimentalists were at Avoi-k . sounding the depths of the national coffers , contriving new schemes for converting ideas into money , distending credit until it collapsed , and imposing every conceivable ingenuity of illusion upon the French , people .
The man who , in the first instance , dug this bottomless pit of deficit was Louis the Fourteenth , whose reputation as a mighty monarch has suffered severely of late years , who forestalled " every branch of the public revenue , and under whose administration , " with that brutal stupidity which , . in all times , and under all circumstances , is characteristic of revenue collectors , the very instruments of husbandry , the tools without which the urLisan could not gain a sou were appropriated . " Money was borrowed at any and every rate of interest , ami when the sovereign died no financier in the country could tell what was the extent of the national obligations . At , all events , " the situation of the Treasury w : is beyond measure alarming . " And what were the principles for the application of which France paid in the blood and tears of the Revolution ' t The king lavishly distributed gifts " and pensions among his personal favourites , and encouraged magnificent Avorks , as princes
do who have at their command vast sums extorted by taxation , and who can increase their expenses by avoiding payment of their debts . When a lit of reform seized upon tlie inheritors of this prodigal 'System , retrenchments were ordered , and peasants paid for exemptions granted to the rich roturiot ' . Then new organizations were designed , in order to centralize public business in Paris , upon the pretence that the supreme authorities should take cognizance of all details from the most important to the most minute . In the midst of thia incredible jobbery , when every resource added to the Exchequer was seized upon by the Court as an excuse for a new quarrel abroad or fresh extravagance at home , arose John Law . the . incidents of Avhose surprising life , as related by M . Oochufc , we lately analyzed . Mj \ Murray ' s account of this singular man and his operations i . s lucid and suggestive , and we think he is among the first of those who have fairly examined and
appreciated the-Scotchman ' s views . "H -was to Luw a matter equally important , " he says , " that , his notes should he convertible , and that they should not , be converted . It wiw his great dilliculiy to accomplish thi : > double object , and it was in vain ell ' orts to achieve it that ho adopted measures which , when once distrust was awakened , precipitated the fall of the gigantic fabric which he had reared . " lint , he continue .- ' , it was the error of confounding money and capital that lay at . the root of the theory propounded by Law . lie mistook gold and silver for wealth , and treated France as the Spaniards treated IY . ru . The natural consequences resulted . Persons possessing notes nominally worth millions of livrcs found it dinicult to obtain money enough to pay for a dinner . The state had borrowed their real property , paying them in guaranteed securities , and when these securities proved worthless , only : i particular class of crafty men remained rich upon the beggary of thousands .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 22, 1858, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22051858/page/19/
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