CURRENT LITERATURE.
Is there a real feeling in Scotland—as distinguished from a mere sentimental, superficial, or newspaper opinion—in favour of Home- rule, or, in plain English, of the repeal of the Union with England P We have asked this question before, and we are tempted to ask it again, and more emphatically, by an extraordinary article which appears in the new number of the Scottish Review, on "The Union of 1707, Viewed Financially." In this paper it is asserted that Scotland contributes to the Imperial Exchequer a sum of nearly a million sterling in excess of the proportion which corresponds to its population ; that of the expenditure of the general taxation of the United Kingdom, there is applied to Scotch purposes a sum leas than that to which it is entitled, in proportion to its population, by a million and a quarter ; that the transference of the seat of the legisla- ture to London causes an annual extra expenditure in connection with local objects which may be very moderately estimated at £150,000; and that that transference and the Union of Scotland with England bring about a withdrawal from the former country of expenditure from private revenue which would otherwise directly benefit it, and which is "moderately" stated at £2,000,000,—making an annual total of more than four millions sterling, or about a pound per annum per bead for the whole population of Scotland. Supposing all these figures to be unimpeachable, is the Union between Scotland and England to be resolved into a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence P There is another notable article in the new number of the Scottish Review, introducing—to most of us, at all events—Salvatore Farina, a Sardinian novelist of the day, who is clescribed as the Italian Dickens, and appears to be not undeserving of the description.
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