ticle; and the honour of the Crown as well as the order of public dealings require that this stamp should be a mark of inviolable good faith and honesty. As the purposes for which money is needed can only be attained by the use of portions or pieces of coin, of a fixed substance, unadulterated, and a determined weight, it was provided that a known and public stamp, denoting the quality of the metal and the exact weight and value of the pieces, should be impressed upon them. The right of affixing this stamp to the coin appertains to the sovereign, and it is a capital offence for any other man to coin money in the realm or to circulate counterfeit pieces; indeed, adds Oresme, the privilege is such that it cannot and ought not to be conceded to any vassal, and would be a good cause of war against such as may usurp it. As the current coin of the realm belongs to the community and not to the king, so it ought to be minted and coined at the public charge (7th chapter); and in such wise that the cost of the coinage be paid out of it, but care must be had that this royalty be extremely small, lest it be prejudicial to the community at large. He then discusses the various mutations to which the coin of the realm may be subjected, premising, in the words of Aristotle, that certainly the thing which ought most firmly to remain as it is should be money;' and he sums up this part of the subject in the following terms: 6 I am aware that the principal and final cause for which the sovereign claims the right of changing the coin is nothing else than to turn it to his own gain and emolument. Otherwise it would be of no avail that he should mnltiply these changes. I will then more plainly show, on this head, that such gain is unjust and wicked. For first, every mutation of money (save in those rare cases which I have previously discussed) contains in itself so much deception and falsehood, that the Prince can have no right to do it for when a Prince usurps a right of acting unjustly, the profit he derives from it cannot be just or honest, since the nation suffers by it. Whatever," says Aristotle, "a Prince does to the prejudice or damage of the community is injustice, tyranny, and not royal;" and if he were to say (for tyrants are wont to lie) that he would turn that gain to the public advantage, his word is not to be believed; for by the like reasoning he might strip me of my garment or of anything else for the public advantage. But, as the Apostle saith, it is not lawful to do evil that good may come.' (P. xlvi. cap. 15.) And in the same spirit he adds: : 'The difference between the good government of the kingdon and a tyrannical rule is this, that the tyrant loves and seeks his own profit more than the common good of his subjects, and therefore aims to hold his people in serfdom and subjection. The good king and good before his private or personal ends; and prince, on the contrary, places the common beyond all things else, save only God and his own soul, he loves the welfare and public liberty of his people. "Disciplina imperandi," says Cassiodorus, "est amare quod multis expedit!" But if the kingdom should turn to a tyrannical government, it cannot long be guarded and defended, but shall fall away into where men have the manners of a frank and decline and perdition, especially in a land free people, not of serfs, and who by long use are not accustomed to be arbitrarily governed; for as servitude would be to them inexpedient, involuntary, and oppressive, so it must be violent, and therefore not durable. "Few things," says Aristotle, "are to be left to the arbitrament of the judge or of the Prince; and he quotes that example of Theopompus, King of Lacedæmon, who, having released to his subjects several of the imposts come to the supreme power, abandoned and and exactions which his predecessors had laid upon them. Whereat his wife wept sore, and reproached him that it was a shameful and pusillanimous thing for a son to succeed to the kingdom of his father with less of emolument and profit than his father had derived from it. To whom the good King, in two words, replied, "Trado diuturnius! I prolong its du ration." Oh! divine oracle! oh! weighty words, and worthy to be painted in kings' chambers in letters of fine gold! "Trado diuturnius"-in other words, I have increased my kingdom by the duration of time more than I have diminished it by the moderation of authority.' (P. lxxxi.) Great Lastly, then, as I suppose it is now sufficiently proved, to seek or take the profit or wealth of the crown by mutations of the coin of the realm is an act of injustice and tyranny, not to be endured or continued in any kingdom which is not tyrannically governed. evils and inconveniences arise from these mutations, as has been said; but other evils must precede those which come after, since such frauds and robberies can only be committed by men already corrupt in thought and intentmen ready to abet all frauds and tyrannical perversities to which they may see the Prince bend and incline, as indeed we have ourselves recently witnessed. I say this, in fine, that whatever tends to the perdition of the kingdom is vile and injurious to the King, his heirs, and successors; and one of those things is to govern tyrannically and to take the substance of the lieges by mutations of money or otherwise. Therefore all such mutations and exactions are against the honour of the whole royal posterity, and highly injurious: which is herein proved.' Middle Ages; and he recommends the lim(P. lxxxv.) itation of the right of striking money to one establishment under the control of the royal authority. In the second place, he proceeds to show that to strike good money is not enough to regulate the currency, unless the bad mon tion. Melius semper erit veterem monetam in reparatione recentis penitus abolere. Oportebit enim tantillum damnum simul equanimiter pati, si modo damnum dici possit unde uberior fructus et utilitas magis constans nascitur ac respublica incrementum sumit' (p. 70). This was substantially the plan devised by Montague in 1695 to carry into effect the recommendations of Sir Dudley North, and of Locke, and to recoin the currency of England. The measure was a bold one even in that day, although the English Minister had contrived that the loss on the debased coin should be borne, not by the holders of it, but by the State. Copernicus appears to have thought, as may be inferred from the foregoing sentence, that the loss to private persons was more than compensated by the advantage to the generality. There is a freshness and vigour in the language and the sentiments of this old Prelate a tone of freedom and a sense of justice which do him immortal honour; and when we read these things in the sturdy el-ey be absolutely withdrawn from circulaoquence of the fourteenth century, we marvel at the centuries of arbitrary power and triumphant wrong, which have seemed, at times, to crushed the love of justice and liberty out of the hearts of the French nation. Even now they may be reminded by these pages that Trado diuturnius' is not the motto of power violently assumed or arbitrarily used; and that the principles which ought to regulate the sound administration of finance cannot be transgressed in vain. The treatise entitled Monetæ cudendæ ratio,' by Copernicus, which is also included in this volume, is not less remarkable than that of his French prototype. Indeed it is of a more practical character, for it enters with precision into the means to be taken to restore the debased currency of the province of Prussia to its true value. Copernicus was born in 1473, so that this essay may be fairly ascribed to the earlier years of the sixteenth century, and it establishes the claim of the Polish philosopher to be regarded as the precursor of Serra, Davanzati, and the other Italian economists, who are commonly described as the first correct authorities on the subject.* It is curious to remark that although the evils of debased money were universally felt and acknowledged, and the remedy for these evils had been pointed out at so early a period, yet centuries elapsed before these remedies were applied. The reason is that corrupt and absolute governments conOn two points especially Copernicus de-ceived themselves to have an interest in serves the credit of pointing out the princi- maintaining their imaginary control over ples which have been applied in far more recent times. He advocates the suppression of those numerous local mints which had powerfully contributed to confuse and perplex the monetary systems of Europe in the . *Some account of their writings will be found in Dr. Travers Twiss View of the Progress of Poli tical Economy in Europe,' delivered before the University of Oxford in 1846 and 1847. the value of money, and they therefore kept alive those delusions which obscured the true theory of the science. How often, and how long, have similar delusions retarded the application of the most obvious principles of political economy! and how slow has been the progress of mankind in the comprehension of laws immediately affecting their nearest interests ! DEATH OF GORDON CUMMING.-English papers report that Mr. Gordon Cumming, whose hunting adventures in South Africa twenty years since gave him a world-wide reputation, died at his residence at Fort Augustus on the 24th ult. aged forty-nine. He first exhibited the trophies of his skill and daring in London at the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851, and since that period he has shown the collection in different parts of the country. For the last eight years the "mighty hunter" had located himself at Fort Augustus, where his museum of curiosities formed a source of attraction to passengers by the route of the Caledonian Canal. From The Victoria Magazine. THE TRAVELS OF LADY HESTER STAN HOPE. BY P. F. ANDRE. ed modes of life, and to the want felt by most strong characters, of a freer development than that afforded to them by modern society. One of our greatest living writers on ethics, John Stuart Mill, in his classical To the present generation of her country- work on Liberty, has devoted a chapter to men, Lady Hester Stanhope is nothing more an apology for eccentricity, or, as he entithan an eccentric personage." The aber-tles it, "Individuality, as one of the elerations of her later years live in brass; ments of well-being.' the brilliant exploits of her prime, the manifold deeds of intrepidity and charity which ended only with her life, seem to have been "writ in water." There are, in this chapter, many passages which are precisely applicable to Lady Stanhope and her critics. At the risk of being tedious, I proceed to quote some of them: "As it is useful that while mankind are im perfect there should be different opinions, so it is that there should be different experiments of living, that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others, and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that, in things which do not, primarily, concern others, individuality should assert itself.". "The evil is that individual spontaneity is The three volumes of "memoirs," which relate principally to the declining period of her life, were at one time a popular work, whereas the "travels" which narrate the events of the first seven years of her expatriation, and which exhibit the heroine in the zenith of her influence, and when she was still, partially, subject to the restraints of occidental habits of mind and ethics, fell still-born from the press, not because of any intrinsic inferiority in the latter work, but because it did not, like the former, gratify hardly recognized by the common modes of the public taste for racy anecdotes and gos-thinking, as having any intrinsic worth or desip concerning the notable characters who serving any regard on its own account The figured in the high political and fashionable majority being satisfied with the ways of manworld at the commencement of this century. kind as they now are (for it is they who make The most extensively read Syrian tourists, them what they are) cannot comprehend why such as Lamartine and the author of Eo- those ways should not be good enough for every then," visited her when she had become the body. Few persons, out of Germany, even morbid recluse of Joon. These gentlemen comprehend the meaning of the doctrine which knew little or nothing of the first period of Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both as a her travels along the shores of the Mediter- savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise, that 'the object towards ranean and in Syria.* She appears in their which every human being must ceaselessly dipages, as she, in fact, was in her later days, rect his efforts, and on which, especially, those a bizarre compound of the Syrian astrologer who design to influence their fellow-men must and prophetess, with the brilliant niece of ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of powthe British minister, initiated in all the mys- er and development; that for this there are two teries of ministerial politics and the life of requisites, freedom and a variety of situations; the London salons. But the chain of cir- and that from the union of these arise individcumstances which led to this singular com- ual vigour and manifold diversity, which combination, the gradual metamorphosis of bine themselves in originality.' character which her Oriental life wrought in Lady Hester, have never, so far as I know, been traced and indicated. 66 Our public opinion, which is hostile to all unbending nonconformity, all incorrigible eccentricities of conduct in men, is still more severe and jealous in regard to women. Hence, before attempting to fill the void which exists in the popular conception of this singular and gifted woman, I think it necessary to establish the stand-point from which she ought to be viewed. This leads us at once to the ground of ethics and the value of new experiments in the art of living, the amount of deference due to receiv*Lamartine's very concise account is full of er rors. "Society has, now, fairly got the better of individuality, and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency of personal impulses and preferences. "In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus, the mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until, by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow; their human capaci ties are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are, generally, without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. To give any fair play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exercised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity. "Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people, less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves without hurtful compression into any of the small number of moulds which society provides, in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. If they are of strong character and break their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to commonplace, to point at with solemn warning, as wild, erratic,' and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara river, for not flowing smoothly beIt tween its banks like a Dutch canal. is in these circumstances when the opinions of masses of merely average men (and women) are everywhere become or becoming the dominant power, that exceptional individuals, in stead of being deterred, should be encouraged in acting differently from the mass. In other times, there was no advantage in their so doing, unless they acted not only differently but better. In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is it self a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded, and the amount of eccentricity has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of our time." Lady Hester was one of those who are experimentalists in the art of life, who broke through the fetters of convention, who had strong impulses, and determined on having a character of her own, who therefore became a mark for the society which she affronted, and which returned her affronts with ridicule. While there is indeed much in her life and character which may serve as a warning to other strong ambitious characters, there is also much of heroism, chivalry, vigour and independence, which a weak and commonplace generation may contemplate with edification and profit. philosopher. Yet Lady Hester always called herself emphatically a Pitt, ever plumed herself on her striking likeness to her maternal grandfather, and never laid stress though she would have indignantly repudion her Stanhope blood. Nevertheless, alated any family likeness to her father, an impartial judge can hardly help tracing back something of her strength and individuality of character, something, too, of her mechanical ingenuity and general handiness, to that remarkable man. Her father was educated at Geneva, and remained through life French Revolution he was the most distina zealous republican. At the time of the guished of British fraternizers with the republicans of France. In the house of Lords, he declared his readiness to die for liberty; he sometimes divided in a minority of one; the Whig peers, Lansdowne, Lauderdale, Bedford, and the like, disclaiming all political association with him. A preamble and motion of his were once ordered by the House of Lords to be removed from the Register of Proceedings, as insulting, from their levelling spirit, to the dignity of that body. The late Lord Holland, in his "Memoirs of the Whig party, during my time, says of him (Vol. I., p. 35)— "He was in some senses of the word the truest Jacobin I have ever known; he not only deemed monarchy, a clergy, and a nobility, but property, or at least landed property by descent, unlawful abuses. He more than once complimented me by telling me, in a whisper, that he thought me more mischievous than people imagined, and he sometimes gave me a glimpse of his designs in proposing measures apparently preposterous, by hinting their tendency to subvert the fundamental principles of society, or by laughing immoderately, when such was suggested to be the probable effect of them." In costume, he affected the dress of the English republicans of the seventeenth century; his hair was left uncurled and unpowdered, and cropped close and evenly in front, 66 so as exactly to resemble Sir Harry Van's portrait during the civil wars." In mechanics he showed Fulton how to apply steam to ocean and river navigation, and he was the author of an improved process of stereotyping, which will immortalize his name in connection with that art. These are but the most famous of his numerous contributions to many departments of natu Lady Hester was born in March, 1776, the eldest child of the third Earl of Stanhope, by Lady Hester Pitt, the eldest daughter of the great Earl of Chatham. The Stanhopes were a great political and milita-« Mr. Pitt would often tell me how much I was In her memoirs (Vol. I.p. 174) she sayslike Lord Chatham, my grandfather. Sometimes when I was speaking, he would exclaim Great God! if I were to shut my eyes, I should think it was my father.'" ry family in the last century, and the third Earl was famous as a republican peer, and as an inventor, mechanician, and natural ral philosophy. An appreciative biography of this singular and talented man is given in the volume of the "Annual Biography and Obituary," for 1817, and a less favorable portrait is drawn of him by his executor and pupil, Lord Holland, who, in the "Memoirs of the Whig Party," thus sums up his private character (Vol. I., pp. 34-36)— "If we except his mother, and a certain pious regard for the memory of his father, he seemed to care little for anybody. He was a bad husband, an unkind, and perhaps an unjust, father; yet he exacted nothing from his children that he had not himself been willing to render to his own parents; he was, as his principles required, an easy landlord and an indulgent master, an obedient and affectionate son, and, on many occasions, an active, friendly, and generous promoter of the arts and sciences." Lord Holland considers the third Earl of Stanhope to have been a better son than he was a father, but it must be remembered that Lady Hester, when only in her teens, exhibited her precocious force of character by removing herself from her father's roof and taking refuge with Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent. This step of hers was highly applauded by her maternal relatives, and her example was soon followed by her sisters and the second Lady Stanhope. At a later period of her life she declares she was actuated by solicitude for her father's and sisters' fates. "But why did I quit home? because of my brothers and sisters, and for my father's sake. I foresaw that my sisters would be reduced to poverty if I did not assist them. As for my father, he thought that in joining the democrats he always kept aloof from treason. But he did not know how many desperate characters there were who, like C-for example, only waited for a revolution, and were always plotting mischief. I thought, therefore, it was better to be where I should have Mr. Pitt by my side to help me, should he get into great difficulty. Why they almost took Joyce out of bed in my father's house; and when my father went to town, there were those who watched him, and the mob attacked his house, so that he was obliged to make his escape by the leads and slip out the back way. Then were not Lord Thanet, Ferguson, and some more of them thrown into gaol? I said, 'If my father has not a prop somewhere, he will share the same fate; and this was one of the reasons why I went to live with Mr. Pitt." Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 21. sational powers made her an invaluable companion to him in his hours of leisure. While in this position she saw the inner workings of Downing Street, and used afterwards to assert that she could have obtained a peerage for Sir Lascelles Wraxwall, or any other deserving man. The most valuable portion of her memoirs * relates to this the most brilliant period of her early life. Nowhere does the private life of her great uncle appear in a more favourable light than when seen through the medium of her loving reminiscences. But this halcyon period of elevation and power came to an end for Mr. Pitt's favourite niece on his death, January 23, 1806. Lady Hester retired into private life, with a pension of £1,200 per annum granted to her by the king. The change from a public to a private station was most unwelcome to her. She had sipped of the sweets of power; she had acquired tastes which could not be gratified in her new postiton. She rented a house in Montague Square, which she placed at the convenience of her two half-brothers, but she found her income insufficient to support her station. Her pride was hurt, her amour propre wounded, her liberty of action impeded. She thus describes the miseries of her life in Montague Square. "A poor gentlewoman, doctor, is the worst thing in the world. Not being able to keep a carriage, how was I to go out? If I used a hackney coach, some spiteful person would be sure to mention it. If I walked with a footman behind me, there are so many women of the town now who flaunt about with a smart footman, that I ran the hazard of being taken for one of them; and if I went alone, either there would be some good-natured friend who would hint that Lady Hester did not walk out alone for nothing, or else I should be met in the street by some gentleman of my acquaintance, who would say God bless me, Lady Hester! where are you going alone? do let me accompany you;' and it would be said, 'Did you see Lady Hester crossing Hanover Square with such a one? He looked monstrous foolish. I wonder where they had been.' So that, from one thing to another, I was obliged to stop at home entirely; and this it was that hurt my health so much, until Lord Temple at last remarked it." The battle of Corunna was fatal to her favourite brother, Charles. The Quarterly Review (No. 152), in its notice of her memoirs, hints that she had fixed" the deepest af She lived with her uncle, Mr. Pitt, as his *"Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as rehousekeeper and secretary, during the last lated by herself in conversations with her physi years of his life. Her talents and conver-cian: "3 vols., London, 1845. |