in the ten years from 1831 to 1841, half a million of new houses. Many of these were first and second class houses, a larger number third class, and a still larger number cottages. But we cannot estimate the average price of a house at less than 250%. This would give a total sum expended for the additional and improved houseaccommodation of the people, of one hundred and twenty-five millions. The houses are left to us. Look at the increase of comfort, the provision for an increasing population, the profitable labour employed in making the provision, and the permanent income which the house-builders receive, and doubt not that the hundred and twentyfive millions were well laid out. Look at the parallel war expenditure of 1814, 1815, and see if it has left any traces but debt.

Thus, then, for the cost of the army, navy, and ordnance in the last three years of war, we could have completed two thousand miles of railroads and built half a million of houses.

The war expenditure, as is well known, was supported partly by annual taxation, partly by loans, for which we are still taxed. The loans represented the accumulated capital not engaged in commercial and manufacturing industry, which was seeking investment in Government Stock. The money lent to the government in the last two war-years of 1814, 1815, beyond the amount of debt redeemed, was 54,805,4107. We have heard a great deal of the ruin that is to ensue from the vast amount of new railway enterprise. Without reference to the mere projects of 1845, which would appear upon the face of them to be carried far beyond the point of a safe investment of capital, it appears that the new railways in course of construction in Great Britain, and for which acts of parliament have been obtained, are estimated to cost 51,359,3257. These railways are in number 118, and they are to extend over 3543 miles. Thus, then, the capital seeking investment in new railways which have received the legislative sanction, is not equal to the capital lent to government to spend in the two years of peril and difficulty, 1814 and 1815. Let it not be forgotten that the people will have all the advantages of the railways without any tax-the shareholders alone will bear the risk. The war loans of 1814-15 cost the people to this day more than two millions in actual taxation; and what is there to show for this continued burthen? The railroads of 1845 will enrich the nation and cost the people nothing.

Perhaps this question of taxation is, after all, the point which will most strike the mind as the gauge of the difference between war and peace. In 1815, the last waryear, the amount paid into the Exchequer as the produce of taxation was seventytwo millions, and the excess of expenditure over income was twenty millions. In 1845, the thirtieth peace-year, the amount paid into the Exchequer as the produce of taxation was fifty-three millions; and the excess of income over expenditure was three millions and a half. We thus see that the war taxation, independent of the debt pushed off from the then existing tax-payers, exceeded the peace taxation by nearly 50 per cent. But if we consider the increase of population during these thirty years, we shall come to a much stronger illustration of the difference of expenditure. In 1815 the population of the United Kingdom may be taken at nineteen millions, which would give an amount of taxation for each individual of 37. 15s. 9ḍ. per annum. In 1845 the population may be taken at twenty-nine millions, which would give an annual amount of taxation for each individual of 17. 16s. 6d. If twenty-nine millions of persons have each 17. 19s. 3d. less to pay in taxation, there is an aggregate fund remaining to them for the increase of their comforts-for consumption, or for accumulation-of 56,912,5007. They have a great balance in hand ready to expend upon

new enterprises, which are to create new profits. If the taxation of each individual had continued upon the scale of 1815, we should have had very few great public works. Certainly a million depositors would not have had twenty-five millions in savings' banks. We cannot doubt that with a peace of thirty years, and a consequently reduced taxation, the private capital of the country has very greatly increased. That the public capital has increased, we have only to look at our docks, harbours, canals, sewers, water-works, gas-works, railways, roads, bridges, churches, hospitals, prisons, and schools. In 1815 the annual value of real property in England and Wales, under the Property Tax returns, was fifty-two millions: in 1842 it was returned at eighty-four millions. The profits of trade in 1815, in England and Wales, were assessed at thirty-five millions; in 1842 they are estimated at sixty millions. This is the increase of peace.

These facts ought to make us all pause before we talk lightly of going to war. At the same time they ought to teach other nations, who talk more glibly of war than we do, that the sinews of war are not departed from us.

Call'd HONOUR, which became
The tyrant of the mind,

And so torments our nature without
ground,

Was not yet vainly found:
Nor yet sad griefs imparts,
Amidst the sweet delights
Of joyful amorous wights;

THE IRON AGE.
[For the close of 1845.]

OH glorious Iron Age!
Not for that earth now yields
Treasures more precious than Potosi's gold;
Not that the time-taught sage
With iron sceptre wields

A power more vast than Titan's sons of old;
Not for no storm can hold
The steam-ship on her way;
Nor adverse rivers' beds,
Nor mighty mountains' heads,

To earth's all-binding railroad proudly say
Here come not-he asserts his reign,

And clouds and thunder sweep the subject plain.

But for that coward's name,
That raises not the wind,

That usurer's idol, that poor thing of pawn,
Called PRUDENCE, which to shame
And discount first consign'd

Legions of schemes that held account in scorn,

Was not of fear then born:

Nor yet was heard his moan
Amidst the bubble play

Of premium ever gay;

Nor did his stern laws then the brokers own,

Nor were his hard laws known to. But iron laws, to fill the chest freeborn hearts;

But golden laws, like these,

Which Nature wrote-THAT 'S

LAWFUL WHICH DOTH PLEASE.

*For is throughout used as because.

With golden heaps-THAT'S LAWFUL WHICH PAYS

BEST.

THE CARICATURIST'S PORTRAIT GALLERY.

WE derive the name caricature, and probably the thing itself, from the Italians. Caricare is to load ;-a caricature is a loaded, overcharged representation. Addison describes caricatures as burlesque pictures, "where the art consists in preserving, amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features, some distinguishing likeness of the person. This is the excellence of the modern school of caricature. What Addison says, in addition, describes a school that has long since passed: "The distinguishing likeness is given in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster." In this low style of art the English caricatures of the early part of the seventeenth century are simply disgusting. They possess no wit; they furnish no accurate conception of the peculiarities of the person caricatured. They are for the most part brutal endeavours to make eminent persons, and especially those in power, look as fiendish and unhuman as comports with a slight general resemblance. But for more than half a century we have had a higher school of caricaturists—those who have given us the most faithful portraits of distinguished men as they presented themselves in common life--not in their state-acting dresses—often in some absurd situation in which they never could be found—but for the most part with a truth, on the ludicrous side, which is not seldom wanting in those who undertake to present them in their grave historical aspect. It appears to us that, while we necessarily leave to others the somewhat invidious task of taking the caricaturist's view of our great contemporaries, we may with some profit show how their predecessors in statesmanship, or in literature, were presented for the amusement of a people who have always claimed the privilege of laughing at their rulers and instructors. At any rate we shall gratify no malice, and perpetuate no virulence, by this little series. We confine ourselves to portrait caricatures; partly because we could not adequately exhibit an elaborate composition in our miniature size; and partly because the humour of many of the best of these productions-the best, we mean, for the ludicrous fidelity of their portraits-is mainly forgotten, and could not be explained without much needless circumlocution.

PORTRAIT I. JOHN WILKES. BY HOGARTH.

HOGARTH was not a caricaturist in the ordinary sense of the word. His reputation is founded upon the entire truth of his pictures. He is the greatest of satirists,—and that character excludes the burlesque. His fops and his blackguards are copies of real life. But Hogarth was, in a few instances, a caricaturist, in the common acceptation. On one occasion he stepped down from his lofty height, to take up an everyday instrument of assault;—he was pelted in return, and the mud stuck.

In 1762 Hogarth, then sixty-five years of age, went out of his usual safe course of satirizing general vices and follies, to attack the chief opponents of the ministry, in a caricature called The Times.' Wilkes, who had been on friendly terms with Hogarth, resented this; and in No. 17 of 'The North Briton,' belaboured the painter as a greedy, vain, envious, and treacherous hanger-on of a corrupt court. Wilkes, as all the readers of English history know, was arrested, under a general warrant, as the writer of No. 45 of The North Briton; and the constitutional question of the legality of such a warrant was then first decided in favour of the great principles of liberty. Wilkes was a man that caricature could scarcely render more remarkable in his appearance; it was difficult to overcharge his features. Accordingly, when he