the clearest and most obvious manner, by allowing, in conformity with all appearances, that the value of the produce of the same quantity of labour rose during the war, and has fallen since, owing to the state of the demand and supply, and of the relative abundance and competition of capital in the two periods. * And we believe it will be found, that no instance of a rise or fall of profits has ever occurred which may not justly be attributed to a rise or fall in the value of the produce of the same quantity of labour occasioned by these causes. The reader will be aware that this proposition in no respect impeaches the very great advantages derived from that fall of price which arises from the saving of labour, the use of improved machinery, and the diminution of taxes, or any other outgoings. Such improvements, while they lower the value of any specific quantity of the article produced, have the strongest tendency to raise the value of the produce of the same quantity of labour; and this tendency can only fail to be effectual for short periods, or under particular circumstances. The frequent fall of price arising from the saving of labour and other outgoings, is almost always beneficial. The frequent fall of price not arising from this cause, but from the state of the demand and supply, and the competition of capital, is often prejudicial. The rapid progress of wealth for a continuance, depends upon the produce of labour being of such a value as to occasion its division between the capitalist and labourer in the proportions which are at once the most advantageous to both,† and will increase most rapidly and steadily the quantity and value of the capital, and the number of the people. The system of the new school of political economy has always struck us as bearing a very remarkable resemblance to the system of the French Economists. Their founders were equally men of the most unquestionable genius; of the highest honour and integrity, and of the most simple, modest and amiable manners. If the money price of labour had remained the same during the whole period, this rise in the value of corn and commodities in the first twenty years, and fall subsequently, would have been exactly expressed and measured by the rise and fall in the money prices of commodities. But under great changes in the state of the demand and supply of commodities, money rarely retains the same value. Still, it is of some use as a measure. And as the money prices of corn and commodities rose more during the first part of the period, and fell more during the second part than the money price of labour, this fact, which is absolutely incontrovertible, shows at once that the great change of value was in corn and commodities, while labour remained comparatively constant. It has been said that the manner in which the produce of labour is divided cannot alter the value. If it do not actually alter its value, it clearly shows that its value is altered. Properly speaking, indeed, it is the value of the produce, determined by the demand and supply, which regulates the division, not the division which regulates the value. Their systems were equally distinguished for their discordance with common notions, the apparent closeness of their reasonings, and the mathematical precision of their calculations and conclu, sions founded on their assumed data. These qualities in the systems and their founders, together with the desire so often felt by readers of moderate abilities of being thought to understand what is considered by competent judges as difficult, increased the num ber of their devoted followers in such a degree, that in France it included almost all the able men who were inclined to attend to such subjects, and in England a very large proportion of them. The specific error of the French Economists was the having taken so confined a view of wealth and its sources as not to include the results of manufacturing and mercantile industry. The specific error of the new school in England is the having taken so confined a view of value as not to include the results of demand and supply, and of the relative abundance and competi tion of capital.* Facts and experience have, in the course of some years, gradur ally converted the economists of France from the erroneous and inapplicable theory of Quesnay to the juster and more practical theory of Adam Smith; and as we are fully convinced that an error equally fundamental and important is involved in the system of the new school in England as in that of the French economists, we cannot but hope and expect that similar causes will, in time, produce in our own country similar effects in the correction of error and the establishment of truth. ART. II.-A Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour, as it existed in Europe, but particularly in England, from the Norman Conquest to the Reign of King Charles II. with a Glossary of Military Terms, &c. By Samuel Rush Meyrick, LL.D. and F.S.A. &c. 3 vols. 4to. London. 1824. THERE is no branch of antiquarian research more interesting in itself, or more useful for historical illustration, than the study of the armour of the middle ages. The subject awakens every association which belongs to the olden time of romance. It is interwoven with all the splendour of chivalry; the din of Paynim battle, the alarums of feudal combats, and the festive but perilous * The precise cause of the superiority of Adam Smith's and Mr. Malthus's measure of value, namely, the labour which a commodity will command, over the measure adopted by the new school, namely, the labour worked up in a commodity, is, that the former includes the effects of demand and supply, and the competition of capital, and the latter excludes them. It is a satisfactory circumstance that the principles of free trade are fully acknowledged in all the three systems, and that any deviations from them can only be defended on special grounds. encounter encounter of the courtly joust and tournament. Among those monumental effigies which are frequently our only records of armour, some cross-legged figure in the aisles of our venerable cathedrals will occasionally recall the memory of the heroic enthusiasm and mistaken piety of the crusader, and conduct us in idea through his toilsome march and deadly conflict with the Saracen: at such a moment his contempt of suffering and of danger; his sacrifice of home and kindred; his ready endurance of torture and death, rise at once before us, and forbid us from censuring with severity the madness of his enterprise. Or, if we turn to the rude paintings and illuminated MSS. of the times for armorial costume, the well-foughten' fields of honour, the glittering array of steel-clad warriors, the solemn display of judicial battle, the gayer lists for trial of knightly skill and ladye love; the baronial hall, the minstrelsy, the masque, the banquet and the ball, spring up before us in dazzling and fantastic imagery. But dispelling the illusions of fancy, it is by reducing the inquiry into the changes of armour to the standard of sober reason, that the subject acquires its historical value. It is, in fact, impossible to understand the condition of society in Europe during the middle ages without some acquaintance with the peculiar warfare of the times; and, as the genius of chivalry was wholly personal, and rendered the encounters of nations no more than a multitude of single combats, the inventions of the military art were exhausted in perfecting the construction and the use of individual weapons and defensive harness. All that great game of war which is reducible into the science of tactics, and which with modern armies, as with those of Greece and Rome, is played by a single intelligence pervading mighty masses of physical power, was utterly unknown to the rude chieftains of the feudal hordes. Yet war was their incessant occupation, and the image of war and the chase their only pastime. Since the Homeric age, there has never occurred, perhaps, an era so exclusively military, as that which is comprehended between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries. Almost every order of society mingled in the work of slaughter. Monarchs, nobles, and the inferior proprietors of the soil, found in camps their common theatre of action; and free cities poured forth bands of armed burghers to protect their harvests, or manned their walls with artizans, who enjoyed security within them by no other tenure than their own good swords. During this long and turbulent period, the influence of the softer sex tempered the passion for arms, and the fierce and brutal spirit of feudal anarchy was gradually calmed and humanized by the progress of romantic sentiment. It is a trite observation, that we are indebted for the polished courtesy of modern so Y 4 ciety ciety to the institutions of chivalry; but the fact is alone sufficient to invest the examination into these singular ordinances with par ticular interest; and, while their peculiarities and the state of manners generally, during the middle ages, can be learned only through their connexion with military usages, these again were sensibly affected by progressive changes in the quality and form of arms. As illustrating, therefore, the civil and military history of the middle ages, as shedding a curious light upon the manners customs, and feelings of society, and as forming, moreover, a complete chronology of costume, a systematic dissertation upon armour, accompanied by a full series of clear and accurate engravings, is in every way a desideratum; and as we have hitherto remained without any sufficient work of this nature,-for Capt. goes, is Grose's Essay, however valuable as far as it incomvery plete, we had recourse to the volumes before us with much curiosity. We cannot say that we have risen from their perusal with any extraordinary respect for the judgment and taste of the author, or without considerable disappointment at the style and execution of his costly production. The plan upon which he has conducted his inquiry appears to us extremely inconvenient and ill chosen. The natural divisions of the subject are so strongly marked, that we are at a loss to account for his failing to adopt them; and the steps of improvement by which defensive armour attained its perfection are so easily to be traced, that we cannot but wonder at his discarding the obvious classification of distinct periods in the art, for artificial lines of separation which had no influence upon its general character. After the settlement of the barbarian conquerors of the western empire in their new possessions, and the foundation of the feudal monarchies of Europe, the earliest species of body armour which they adopted was composed of metal rings or scales, sewn on leather or cloth; and this was gradually improved into coats of chain and scale mail, and extended into general coverings for the whole frame. Then mail armour came by degrees to be strengthened by detached plates of iron or steel. This mixed harness was again improved; and the mail disappeared, first from some parts of the body and afterwards from others, until the perfection of defence found the warrior completely cased in steel plates. If villainous saltpetre had never been digg'd out of the bowels of the harmless earth,' in this state the art might have remained to our days; but the invention and murderous improvement of fire-arms slowly wrought their effect upon military science, and brought the vain and cumbrous load of armour into contempt and disuse. As it had progressively increased in weight, quality, and surface over every limb, so was it now reluctantly thrown aside, piece by piece, until in ended, where it had begun, in leather; and even the buff coat of the seventeenth century was at length consigned to monumental costume and the armouries of the curious. Thus we have four great periods in the history of armour;— the progress of the art until the completion of mail armour; mixed harness of mail and plates; plate armour to the period of its perfection; and, finally, its gradual disuse, and, with few exceptions, the total abandonment of defensive arms. Now this simple and evident classification seems entirely to have escaped Dr. Meyrick's observation; and, in place of it, we have, after an introduction on the armour of the ancients, three ponderous tomes occupied seriatim with all the reigns of our English monarchs from William the Conqueror to Charles II. inclusive, and devoid of all systematic arrangement; which should have reference, not to periods of royalty that vary from fifty years to scarcely the same number of days, but to features in his subject totally independent of these extraneous accidents of history. While Dr. Meyrick's work is thus defective in general arrangement, its execution is in some other respects equally open to objection in manner and matter. His style is careless and inelegant, his descriptions are often obscure and confused, and worse than those of a small poet, and his language is not always grammatical; the chain of more important inquiry is broken and interrupted by historical common-places and rambling digressions upon insignificant points and frivolous details; his progress is unnecessarily impeded by endless repetitions; and the information which he desires to communicate is over-loaded with long and tiresome extracts from metrical romances, whose substance he might have conveyed by brief references, or compressed into a few sentences.* The sins of omission in the book are likewise formidable. work is intended to represent the pageant of chivalry, and yet our Lord Chamberlain has left out two of the principal characters -the brother of St. John and the Templar-the dresses of whom were very singular, as being partly military and partly monastic, and should have engaged a considerable share of Dr. Meyrick's attention, because the fraternities of St. John and the Temple were the exemplars of all the chivalric orders in Europe. These -- The * Were we inclined to be critical,' we might notice with some asperity the quotations and translations from the learned languages, which occupy so large a portion of the Introduction, and which are frequently slovenly and incorrect in a very culpable degree. The Glossary, too, which concludes the work, bears many marks of carelessness, and calls for a careful revision. Thus, for instance, we have capellum, a scabbard. This is proved by a latin quotation, which clearly shows the word to mean a hilt! and further illustrated by an extract from an old poem, in which, beyond all question, it signifies a covering for the head! defects |