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1. The Duchy of Lancaster, in which office 240 volumes have been formed from bundles, and bound, containing Inquisitions Post Mortem, Pleadings, Surveys, &c. from Henry 7th to the 23rd, of Elizabeth. 2. The Rolls Chapel. 162 books, comprehending the series of Inquisitions Post Mortem, from the reign of Henry 7th to the 12th year of Queen Elizabeth, have been bound in folio, which previously were in bundles, and consequently not easy of reference. 3. The Chapter House, Westminster. 303 volumes have been bound in folio and quarto, containing valuable historical and other papers, surveys, rentals, &c., of various periods from early time.

4. The Augmentation Office.287 volumes, in folio and quarto, of a similar nature with those at the Chapter House, including also more than 5,000 deeds, have been bound, and nearly 10,000 rolls, most of them previously unarranged, unknown, and obscure, have been completely repaired, newly with parchment backs, and labelled, and endorsed with the titles of their contents. To the operations above-mentioned the secretary to the Board has given his general superintendence over all the works here described, and his more particular attention to the two lastmentioned offices; every book and roll having been inspected and marked by him, for all which, however, as yet, he has received no remuneration whatever.

It will be observed, that ten years nearly have been employed upon these reparations; the whole amount of charge during that period has been 6,137l. 6s. 7d. consequently these works have very little exceeded in expense, one year with another, the sum of 600l., and the whole has been paid for binding and mechanical labour.

How much longer it may take to put the present offices in a state of complete arrangement, cannot be stated with any degree of precision.

Scotland.-Works in progress at

the Press.

I. The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland.

Of this work ten volumes are already printed; viz. from the second to the eleventh inclusively. The first volume, with its introductory prolegomena, is in progress at the press, and may probably be completed within the pre

sent year. The indexes of matters to the whole work will constitute the twelfth and last volume, but cannot be in readiness for the press in less than two years from this time. Each of these volumes will extend to about 600 pages; the printing and binding of each volume will cost about 1,500l. The expense of transcription, and other editorial expenses, cannot be exactly ascertained, but in addition to those already incurred and provided for, they may be estimated at under 1,000l.

II. Collection of Ancient Royal Charters.

Of this work a part is already printed, which is intended ultimately to form the first part of the second volume of a work which

will extend to three volumes in folio. The expense of printing the portion of this work above alluded to exceeded 1,000l. but if the number of copies should be reduced from 1,000 to 500, the expense of the whole that remains to be executed would probably not exceed 2,000l. The expenses of transcription and other editorial expenses would amount to at least an equal sum. From the peculiar nature of the work, four or five years would still be required for its completion.

III.-Abridgment of the Registers of Seisins.

This is a work not intended for general circulation, but solely to facilitate researches in the General Register House, which are at present of a most laborious, tedious, and expensive kind; and of which the difficulty has long been progressively increasing. The abridgment commences with the year 1781, and the first 20 years have been nearly completed at press; and this portion of the work will amount to 3,500 pages in folio. The second series of 20 years, will, in extent, exceed the first by at least one-half, and cannot be safely completed within less than four or five years. It is a work which must afterwards proceed progressively at nearly the same rate. Only twenty-four copies are printed, and the expense on that head amounts to about 21. 10s. per sheet. The expenses of compiling, transcribing, &c., amount at present, to about 1,100l. per annum, and

cannot be greatly diminished till the arrear be fully brought up.

Works preparing for the Press. I-Abridgement of the Register of the Great Seal.

pro

The compilation of this work has been in regular progress since the year 1824; its bable extent, when printed, has been calculated at two closelyprinted volumes in folio, on the supposition of its being brought down to the Union in 1707. The state of the actual compilation, however, which comes down only to the reign of Queen Mary, renders this conjecture uncertain. Several years, not less than four, must be required to complete the abridgment, but in the mean time it will be sent to the press; and on the supposition of its amounting to two closely-printed volumes of 700 pages each, the expense of printing may be estimated at 3,000l., and the other editorial expenses at from 1,600l. to 2,0001.

II. An Abridgment of the Register of Entails.

A selection from the records of Privy Council. An index to the Register of Entails.

Considerable preparations for these works have been made, but at present their completion remains suspended. JOHN CALEY.

Secretary to his Majesty's Commissioners on the Public Records.

June 11, 1829.

II. FOREIGN.

REPORT of the FRENCH ROYAL COMMERCIAL COMMISSION.*

The minister of commerce might, more readily than any other individual, have relied upon his own experience, with regard to the customs duties, and to his own information in matters of trade, considered under the head of public economy. Nevertheless, he was the first to apply to the administration that system of investigation and inquiry which it becomes a representative government to adopt. In the course of the months of November and December last, certain proprietors of mines and forests, forge-masters, iron-merchants, iron-founders, and artificers, were separately called before a commission of inquiry, under the presidency of the minister of commerce. They were examined, attended to, and allowed to offer suggestions with regard to the condition, wants, grievances, and wishes of those connected with the fabrication and trade in iron.

Persons, the most able and skilful among the colonial planters, the beet-sugar makers of France, the refiners, the merchants in every kind of sugar, have likewise been heard and consulted upon what concerns the growth, manufacture, and trade in sugar.

Doubtless this great undertaking is continued, and will be suc

The members of the commission, eighteen in number, are the barons Portal, Pasquier, de Barante; the duke de Fitzjames; counts d'Agout, de Tournon, de Kergariou; Messrs. de Berbis, Humann, Pardessus, Oberkampf, Duvergier de Hauranne, Jacques Lefevre, Gautier de Freville, Filleau de St. Hilaire, Deffaudis, David.

cessively applied to all the various branches of industry, putting us in the way of reforms and improvements which it is now more desirable than ever to carry into our system of imposts and commercial policy. Not, as some sanguine and impatient people suppose, that a clear light can at once burst forth, or that projects of laws and ordinances can proceed exclusively from these inquiries into each particular interest. As in other instances, each individual will pay attention to his own affairs in preference to all other considerations. Such is, such cannot fail to be, the defect of this sort of inquiry; but that affords no reason for abandoning the plan, nor, as it seems to us, is it sufficient to induce us to proceed otherwise.

The two processes verbal, which we have already seen, together with the report of baron Pasquier upon the first, and that of the count d'Agrout on the second, form by themselves two thick volumes. When the opinions and pretensions of every interest obtained in the same way shall have been collected and submitted to the examination of able men, they will certainly afford the materials best calculated to enable the Chambers and the king's ministers to form a correct opinion upon questions of commercial legislation, particularly with respect to the

customs.

The budget of the present year contains a sum of 99,000,000 francs received under the head of customs. Of this, 24,400,000

francs almost twenty-five per cent have been expended on account of collection and management. In fact, considering its nett produce, this of all imposts is the most expensive; consequently, it is the first of which it would be desirable to endeavour to disencumber the contributors, if the matter were considered merely in a pecuniary point of view.

But the customs are not merely a tax-they are also, and indeed especially, an instrument of administration, the necessary regulator of the efforts of industry and national commerce, a mean of defence that should not be allowed to slip, against the invasion of foreign trade and industry, a charge like that of the administration of justice and the maintenance of strong holds, to which society should submit even though the public treasury could not derive from it any advantage. Of all the numerous and complicated consider ations which the budget comprehends, this (of the customs) is one of the most difficult and delicate, when viewed not only as a financial question, but as a question of economy. It is with reference to this latter head, exclusively, that the commission of inquiry has been occupied. Nowhere is the consideration of the amount of pecuniary produce more secondary, in no case would it be so mischievous that that consideration should predominate.

The industrious population is divided into two productive classes, productive by different means, and in many respects opposed in interest. The one, which compre hends the husbandman, the miner, the herdsman, and all the various branches of these three principal divisions, finds employment in exVOL. LXXI.

tracting from the bosom of the earth substances useful to man. Its products, which are raw and necessary materials, possess a commercial value determined by the amount of capital which it is necessary to expend in obtaining them, and never greatly exceeding that amount.

To the other class belong the manufacturer, the workman, the artificer of all sorts of things, who work up the raw material into an infinite variety of forms, and by the mere labour of their hands add to its value a price indeterminate, and, it may be said, without limit.

In every country the former of these two classes has more to lose than gain by importation. Among us what is at present necessary for it almost exclusively is, that it should continue mistress of the markets of the interior-that is, that we should shut out the competition of foreign products, which this class can scarcely sustain upon any point. It seeks to be protected from the introduction of the grain of Odessa, the sugar of India, the iron of Sweden, the hardware of England, the wool of Spain, and black cattle from beyond the Rhine. To effect this, it calls for the assistance of customs, and always finds the tariffs too low.

The class of manufacturing industry has also some interest in excluding from our markets certain rival productions of foreign fabric. But, in addition to this, competition becoming daily less formidable to it in proportion to its own increased skill, freedom of importation in general will more than compensate it for any injury it may sustain by the fall which will thus be occasioned in the price of necessaries. The class of jewellers, therefore, every thing considered, 2 D

is but little inclined to favour the system of customs.

It is the same, and for a stronger reason, with consumers at large, who, without understanding the question generally, perceive in the operation of the customs nothing but an obstacle to their procuring provisions, clothing, and household goods, at the best market.

Then beyond these clashing pri vate interests rise the interests of the public; the necessity of holding equally, if not inclining in favour of France, the balance of trade with foreign nations, so as not to give to the latter the advantage over us which a creditor has over a debtor, but if possible to preserve that advantage over them; the necessity of attaching a revenue to territorial property, in order not to expose to the risk of perishing this, if one may so call it, eldest branch of the social family, and by the same stroke to dry up the most certain as well as the most abundant source of the national wealth; in fine, the great importance which it is to the future prosperity of the country to protect the national industry, feeble as it still is in many respects, and to afford it time and opportunity to acquire sufficient force to maintain the contest which it is called upon to sustain in the competition with foreign industry. Such are the end and incontest. able utility of the customs, considered as an instrument of govern ment; such are the interests which the commission of inquiry is called upon to consider, and if possible to reconcile one with another.

Let us observe, on the other hand, for this is the grand objec tion, that the prohibitive action of the customs on the import trade, which it is necessary to restrict to

a certain limit, re-acts to that point upon our export trade, which it would be desirable to extend as much as possible. It will be readily perceived, that our neighbours as well as ourselves must be anxious to maintain the balance of trade, and with that view, to oppose on their side the introduction of our produce, by the same restrictions and the same duties by which we resist the introduction of theirs. Thus we see that every where the wines of France are subjected to those enormous import duties, of which the departments of the South complain so vehemently this year, and which they chiefly attribute to that kind of prohibition to which the introduction of foreign iron is subjected.

This question of iron, which occupied the earliest attention of the commission, affords also an example, remarkably singular, of the utility of the operation of the customs, and of rigorous tariffs for the development and maintenance of certain branches of the national industry.

The necessity of our supplying ourselves during twenty-five years of maritime warfare, and of conti nental blockade, gave rise to a great many speculations and estab lishments for the working and improvement of our native iron. These created employment for vast capital and for a great many hands, The value of property in wood (the only fuel then used in forges) was soon very considerably increased, and this increase gave rise to new fortunes and new interests. In the year 1818, the (iron) manufactories of France gave to commerce 800,000 quintals of wrought iron, which, in leaving the manufactories, represented a value of 40,000,000 of francs, 50 francs the

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