| <Saturday Review 7 May 1859: Bagehot>
| <Mr James Deacon Hume>
| This is a book which should either not have been written at 
| all, or have been written by <reg orig=“some one” someone 
| </reg> else. The life of Mr. James Deacon Hume might 
| have been made both interesting and instructive by a 
| biographer acquainted with the history of the science of 
| political economy during the present century, and with the 
| details of our commercial legislation during the same 
| period. But it is of little interest in the hands of any other 
| person. The career of Mr. Hume had no marked singularity 
| or striking events. It is the straightforward man of business. 
| Mr. Badham’s style is entirely unsuited to this sort of 
| biography. It is unmethodical, pompous, and ambitious of 
| needless ornament. To the scientific or the official 
| knowledge which would have made his work of real value, 
| he does not seem to pretend; and he has attempted to give 
| a factitious interest to his subject by accounts of things and 
| persons with which Mr. Hume was very slightly connected.
| One of the peculiarities of active life in England of late 
| years has been the number of men of business who have 
| taken an interest in abstract political economy, and who 
| have written valuable works upon it. For many years 
| merely theoretical writers on this science have done very 
| little to advance its progress, and that little has not been 
| very important. But this defect has been amply supplied by 
| the valuable labours of many practical men. There is, 
| indeed, nothing singular in the fact that mane of business 
| should take an interest in the theory of business ~~ we 
| should be surprised if it were otherwise. Nevertheless, the 
| great excellence of works of this kind is a peculiarity of 
| recent time. But very few such works of any great value are 
| known, even by those most curious in such matters, to 
| have appeared before the publication of the <hi> Wealth of 
| Nations. </hi? The reason seems to be, that Adam Smith 
| removed out of the path of succeeding inquirers most of 
| the more obvious fallacies, most of the errors of first 
| impression which perplex the subject, and established its 
| fundamental principles on a firm though rather vague basis. 
| Men of business would not have been themselves equal to 
| this preliminary task. <hi> A priori, </hi> it would seem to 
| need a more general philosophic training than they have at 
| present, and more of leisure than it can be expected that 
| they will ever have. In fact, before the time of Adam Smith, 
| the minds of men of business were generally clouded by 
| the errors of what is called the <p> “mercantile system” 
| </p> ~~ which is but an attempt, more or less successful, 
| to express in a scientific form certain prejudices natural to 
| the money market. From the time that practical men were 
| started in a right direction they have made great progress 
| ~~ far greater than that of any scientific writers ~~ but they 
| want the general views and calm reflectiveness necessary 
| at the earliest stage. At that point an acquaintance with 
| detail is scarcely an assistance ~~ a little remoteness from 
| it is even an advantage.
| Mr. J.D. Hume belonged precisely to the class of persons 
| of whom we have been speaking. He was a scientific 
| economist and a practical man of business, and he 
| distinguished himself in both pursuits. His position was 
| very favourable for a combination of the two. His father, 
| whose merits as a man of business appear to have 
| attracted the notice of Mr. Pitt, was Secretary to the Board 
| of Customs, and he himself entered the Custom House at 
| sixteen. In early life he seems to have been most 
| remarkable for bodily energy. He had been at a public 
| school, and benefited at least by that portion of its training. 
| His fondness for hunting must have been remarkable. 
| <q></q> we are told, <q> </q>. Of his official career his 
| biographer tells us but little, and that little is not very 
| intelligible. We ought to have had, in such a biography as 
| this, a clear account of Mr. Hume’s official career; but Mr. 
| Badham evidently thinks this portion of his duties beneath 
| him. He gives us instead quotations from Mr. Burke and 
| other eminent writers, which very seldom have any 
| tendency to elucidate his subject. We have, however, 
| some account of Mr. Hume’s introduction to the statesman 
| of that time who was most likely to appreciate his powers 
| of usefulness. <q> </q> which, if we rightly understand his 
| biographer, was at this time that of the Controller of the 
| Customs, <q> </q>.
| The great work to which Mr. Hume owed his reputation as 
| a man of business was his consolidation of a large portion 
| of the Customs Law. An enormous number of statutes ~~ 
| Mr. Badham says fifteen hundred ~~ then regulated that 
| portion of our administration. Each Act had been passed 
| with reference only to its special object, and the confusion 
| and complexity which might have been expected seem to 
| have ensued. In 1822, Mr. Hume undertook to consolidate 
| a large part of these Acts into a moderate compass. The 
| success of his attempt has been vouched for by many very 
| competent judges. Sir James Stephen, in the volume 
| before us, has pronounced the following characteristic 
| eulogium on it: ~~ <q> </q>. And Mr. Huskisson, in the 
| House of Commons, gave a still higher testimony to the 
| value of the work: ~~ <q> </q>.
| This important task was completed in 1826, and two years 
| afterwards Mr. Hume was removed from the Customs to 
| the Board of Trade, of which he was one of the Secretaries 
| till his retirement from the public service n 1840. During 
| that period he was undoubtedly a most efficient man of 
| business, but he had no opportunity of doing anything 
| which would be likely to be remembered very long. An 
| administrative reputation is, from the nature of it, very 
| temporary.
| Mr. Hume’s claim to a posthumous fame rests on his 
| writings as a political economist, of which the most 
| remarkable are a series of letters published under the 
| signature of H.B.T. in the <hi> Morning Chronicle </hi> in 
| 1834, and which Mr. Badham has very properly reprinted. 
| Pamphlets on political economy are not often of enduring 
| reputation, but these letters deserve a place in economical 
| history, as among the earliest expositions of two 
| remarkable theories on two important subjects. The first is 
| that of Free Trade. Mr. Deacon Hume was a Free-trader, 
| and almost the earliest Free-trader of what may be called 
| the Anti-Corn-law League school. The general maxims of 
| commercial freedom have been stereotyped 
| commonplaces from Adam Smith’s time downwards. 
| Educated men have for many years more or less 
| acquiesced in them. But it was considered by the majority 
| of Englishmen, not excepting many eminent political 
| economists, that there were economical circumstances 
| which rendered it very unwise to apply them to many parts 
| of English commerce, and especially to the corn-trade. it 
| was to this last point especially that Mr. Hume 
| endeavoured to draw public attention in the letters we have 
| mentioned. The received notion, even among Free-traders, 
| then was, that there were peculiar burdens affecting 
| English agriculture which rendered it impossible for it, 
| under a system of free trade, to compete even in the 
| English market with foreign agriculture, and that a 
| protective duty on the importation of foreign corn would 
| countervail those peculiar disadvantages, and enable it 
| successfully to compete with them. Mr. Hume was among 
| the first to deny both these assumptions. He maintained 
| that there were no important burdens affecting the English 
| farmer which did not press with equal weight on all other 
| capitalists in this country, or which could give him a claim 
| to protection at the expense of other capitalists. He also 
| denied that the price of corn was higher under the 
| protective system than it would be under one of entire free 
| trade, and tat, therefore, it was an error to speak of the 
| existing duties as a satisfactory compensation to the 
| farmers for their peculiar burdens. He strongly maintained 
| that they did not give them higher prices for their corn than 
| they did would obtain without them. These views are those 
| which, fifteen years ago, were first made generally known 
| to the country by the efforts of the League. Although 
| doubts may be raised to some of the details of these tenets, 
| and substantial objections taken to many of the most 
| celebrated arguments by which they were supported, their 
| general correctness was, at the time of the repeal of the 
| Corn-laws, generally admitted by educated men. Hume 
| was so convinced of their soundness that he was in the 
| habit of saying <q> </q>; and he is entitled to be 
| remembered as one of the earliest promulgators of such 
| tenets. Mr. Hume’s services to the Free-trade cause were 
| not confined to writing. he possessed very considerable 
| powers of conversational exposition, and made use of 
| them in explaining his favourite views to the many 
| statesmen with whom he was officially brought into contact. 
| And there is much evidence collected in the volume before 
| us that he did so with remarkable success.
| The second subject with which Mr. Hume’s name ought in 
| some degree to be connected is that of the currency. His 
| contributions to this subject are less important than to that 
| of Free-trade, and from other causes much less interesting. 
| it had been generally believed that the suspension of cash 
| payments by the Bank of England had ~~ at least before 
| the time of the Bullion Committee in 1810 ~~ been followed 
| by a great depreciation in the currency of this country. Gold, 
| it is certain, was not then to be found in actual use here as 
| a circulating medium, and it was believed that it had been 
| driven abroad by over-issues of paper. Mr. Hume denied 
| that the effect was owing to such a cause. He considered 
| that the exportation of gold was mainly owing to the 
| demand for it consequent on our foreign military payments, 
| and on the unfavourable balance of trade created by 
| Napoleon’s prohibition of our manufactures. Gold went 
| abroad, he thought, not because our currency was in 
| excess, but because it was the only commodity which 
| Bonaparte would permit the Continent to take, or which 
| would be suitable for war payments. He believed besides 
| that the prices of commodities here were not, generally 
| speaking, higher than they were on the Continent, as 
| apparently they would have been if our currency had been 
| depreciated below the level of theirs. Mr. Hume did not 
| dissent from the doctrine of the Bullion Committee, that the 
| English currency was depreciated below the value which it 
| would have maintained if the suspension of cash payments 
| had not been adopted. he fully agreed with the Committee 
| that, to the extent to which the price of gold in the market 
| differed from its price at the Mint, the paper currency was 
| depreciated below what must have been its value had it 
| been convertible into gold on demand; but he thought that 
| if Bank notes had continued to be so convertible, the whole 
| currency of both gold and paper would have risen in value 
| as compared with commodities in general, because of the 
| unusual demand for gold upon the Continent. He believed, 
| therefore, that the measures of the Bank should rather be 
| said to have prevented an appreciation, than to have 
| caused a depreciation of the currency. Views of this kind 
| have since been very extensively promulgated, but in 1834, 
| they were new; and, whatever may be their soundness, Mr. 
| Hume’s name ought to be mentioned in connexion with 
| them.
| On the whole, Mr. Hume must be considered as one of the 
| first of the practical men of business who have contributed 
| to the progress of political economy. His mind was strong, 
| and his views, for the most part, sound. He was profoundly 
| acquainted with the commercial details of his age, and 
| spared no labour in attempting to verify his commercial 
| theories by comparison with actual facts. He was unusually 
| successful as an expositor, for his great powers as a man 
| of business inclined most persons to listen to his theories 
| about business.