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Their primary object has been, not to secure a gradual, lasting, honourable advance from brutal license towards rational morality, for the well-being of the whole nation; but to maintain the present degraded state of things at less expense of suffering to the stronger half of the community.

"For the temporary realities of the hour, our legislators have forgotten the eternal reality of justice. The temporary advantage will cease, and the difficulty of returning into the path of justice will be increased by the moral deterioration inevitable whenever principle has been abandoned for expediency." Human law itself-the compulsion of individuals by the force of society--is, when not sanctified by a principle, a crime. The police, when they are not the instruments of the moral force of the nation, are degraded into the dangerous hireling tools of the tyranny of the strong over the weak.

What is wanted in the present case, is not a temporary material guarantee against one of the evils of prostitution; it is the gradual creation of permanent moral and material guarantees against both the physical evils and the moral causes of prostitution; and we have no right to declare this impossible until we have earnestly and faithfully endeavoured to achieve it.

"However fatal to the lifeblood of the State are the physical disorders following in the wake of prostitution, infinitely more fatal is the league which a State, by publicly discountenancing the disease and not the acts which bring it about, makes with prostitution itself."1

Assuming, therefore (what we do not believe), that these Acts are immediately beneficial in" stopping the ravages of disease," we repeat that we still "declare them worthy of our strongest reprobation," because we are profoundly convinced that the result of educating the rising generation in the belief that not immorality, but the disease consequent on immorality, is obnoxious to the State, would be so debasing as ultimately to lead to more extended, degraded, and injurious forms of sexual vice; and that the Acts would, consequently, fail to permanently secure even the physical benefit for which higher aims have been overlooked; proving once again the truth which the largest-minded politicians have long preached in vain,that injustice is always, in the long run, inexpedient.

We ought never to lose sight of the demoralising effect produced upon the young by the maintenance of a Pariah class in the heart of the community. The greatest Continental thinker of our day has wisely said, "The Spartans diverted education from its true aim, and condemned their republic irrevocably to death, on the day when, to teach their children temperance, they showed them the spectacle of a drunken Helot."

Logic and justice are twin-sisters. You remind us that the sufferers are human beings. We answer that mankind is one, and whatever temporary beneficial results (in this case unproven) may result from neglect of justice, it is-thank God !-morally and physically impossible to benefit humanity by the degradation of a single individual.

"Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto."

E. A. VENTURI,

Member of the London Committee of the Ladies' National Association

for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

(1) Professor Sheldon Amos.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

SOME BOOKS OF THE MONTH.

On Labour. By W. T. THORNTON. Second Edition. Macmillan. 148. It is worth while to call attention to the appearance of a second edition of this valuable book, because Mr. Thornton has added a considerable quantity of new matter; partly controversial, dealing very instructively with some of the various criticisms which the positions of the first edition suggested, and partly descriptive, as the supplementary chapter, for instance, on Co-operative Progress and Prospects.

The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. By G. W. Cox, M.A. Two vols. Longman. 288.

A LEARNED and elaborate contribution to the science of comparative mythology. Besides very ample illustrations of the resemblance or identity between the myths of the Aryan nations, the author claims the discovery and proof of the facts that "the epic poems of the Aryan nations are simply different versions of one and the same story; and that this story has its origin in the phenomena of the natural world, and the course of the day and the year." The mass of information which the writer has collected is thus arranged with a view, first, to the identification of the Aryan poems and stories; and, second, to the establishment of their physical origin. Mr. Cox is as resolute an enemy as Sir Cornewall Lewis himself to arbitrary and unverified theory, and the peculiarity of his method is a careful and full statement of facts, and the evidence they furnish.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Policy of Count Beust. By an ENGLISHMAN. Chapman and Hall. 98.

AN authentic account of the policy of the Austrian Government since the catastrophe of 1866, and the subsequent accession to power of Count Beust. The writer quotes chapter and verse of dispatches, statistical tables, and so forth, and is evidently thoroughly well-informed. His view is eminently favourable to the policy of which Count Beust has been the originator and guide.

The Morning Lana. By EDWARD DICEY. TWO vols. Macmillan. 16s. MR. DICEY went to the East as special correspondent for an important daily paper on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal, and these two volumes are his letters reprinted. Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land are included under his title, and he tells us what he saw in an exceptionally sensible, instructive, and entertaining manner. He has travelled too far in his life not to be free from the preposterous affectations and random enthusiasm of the novice in travelling. There is probably no book about the East which reproduces so faithfully and naturally as Mr. Dicey's book does, the impression which an intelligent and reflective traveller is most likely to receive on his first visit.

Reconnoitring in Abyssinia. By COLONEL H. ST. CLAIR WILKINS, R.E. Smith, Elder, & Co. 188.

AN account of the operations of the Reconnoitring Party which preceded the Abyssinian Expedition properly so called. The reconnoitring force was at work during October and November, 1867, the main body of the expeditionary force disembarking in the December and January following. Colonel Wilkins was the commanding Engineer of the expedition. The volume is illustrated by ten coloured views. It will probably be more interesting to those who took part in the expedition than to the general public.

The Courtly Poets from Raleigh to Montrose. Edited by Rev. J. HANNAY,
Warden of Trinity College, Glenalmond. Bell and Daldy. 58.
THE principal feature in this little volume is the resuscitation of Sir Walter
Raleigh's poetry, a task to which the editor has devoted special attention. The
second part is given to Sir Henry Wotton. In the third are specimens of other
Courtly Poets from 1540 to 1650, including Wyatt, Lord Vaux, Edward, Earl of
Oxford, Dyer, the Earl of Essex, and the Marquis of Montrose.

History of Europe during the French Revolution. By PROFESSOR VON SYBEL. Translated by WALTER C. PERRY. Vols. III. and IV. Murray. 248. THE two concluding volumes of the English translation. The whole history covers the period from '89 to the Thirteenth Vendémiaire, and the second volume concluded with the death of the King. The third volume opens in February, '93, with the first Committee of Public Safety, and includes the Terror, and the victorious campaigns in Belgium. The fourth volume opens with Robespierre and the Ninth Thermidor, and contains very full details of the third Partition of Poland and of the Treaty of Basle, as well as of the first epoch in the history of the Convention.

The State, the Poor, and the Country. By R. H. PATTERSON. W. Blackwood and Sons.

A REPRINT of the concluding chapter of a more important work by the same author, published two years ago. The measures which Mr. Patterson thought desirable in '67 seem to him better worth attention now than ever, because of the prevailing depression of trade, and its attending circumstances. The writer's leading idea is the employment of the poor upon public works, such as the reclamation of waste lands, sewage, the construction of railways in Ireland; and one of the chief means which he points out is the granting of State loans to co-operative industrial associations.

A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War. By PROFESSOR MOUNTAGUE BERNARD. Longmans. 168. THIS important volume opens with an account of the causes and earlier circumstances of the war, and the declaration of their neutrality by the European Powers, and the subsequent complaints of the United States Government. Then we have the history of the Trent, the blockade, the Confederate ships in neutral ports, the Alabama and the cruisers, the progress and end of the war, and the last negotiations with Mr. Reverdy Johnson. The writer discusses these various points from the view of International Law, and with great candour as well as juristic ability.

THE

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.

No. XLII. NEW SERIES.-JUNE 1, 1870.

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PROFESSOR LESLIE ON THE LAND QUESTION.1

THE founders of Political Economy have left two sorts of disciples: those who have inherited their methods, and those who have stopped short at their phrases; those who have carried on the work of the masters, and those who think that the masters have left them no work to do. The former follow the example of their teachers in endeavouring to discern what principles are applicable to a particular case, by analysing its circumstances; the latter believe themselves to be provided with a set of catch-words, which they mistake for principles-free-trade, freedom of contract, competition, demand and supply, the wages fund, individual interest, desire of wealth, &c.—which supersede analysis, and are applicable to every variety of cases without the trouble of thought. In the language of Mr. Leslie, himself one of the best living writers on applied political economy-

"A school of economists of no small pretensions, strongly represented in Parliament, supposes itself to be furnished with a complete apparatus of formulas, within which all economic knowledge is comprised, which clearly and satisfactorily expounds all the phenomena of wealth, and renders all further investigation of the causes and effects of the existing economy of society needless, and even mischievous, as tending to introduce doubt and heresy into a scientific world of certainty and truth, and discontent and disturbance into a social world of order and prosperity."2 (P. 89.)

Since the downfall of Protectionism made Political Economy a term of honour, and no longer, with the classes dominant in politics

(1) "LAND SYSTEMS AND INDUSTRIAL ECONOMY OF IRELAND, ENGLAND, AND CONTINENTAL COUNTRIES." By T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE, LL.B. of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-atLaw, Examiner in Political Economy in the University of London, and Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the Queen's University in Ireland, and Queen's College, Belfast. London: 1870.

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(2) Mr. Leslie adds: “Political writers and speakers of this school have long enjoyed the double satisfaction of beholding in themselves the masters of a difficult study, and of pleasing the powers that be, by lending the sanction of science' to all established institutions and customs, unless, indeed, customs of the poor. Instead of a science of wealth, they give us a science for wealth."

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and society, one of opprobrium, this routine school of political economists have mostly had things their own way; the more easily, as they comprise in their ranks some men of more than ordinary talents and acquirements, but who share the common infirmity of liking to get their thinking done once for all, and be saved all further trouble except that of referring to a formula. The ascendancy, however, of this school has always been disputed by those who hold that general maxims should be helps to thought, not substitutes for it. And the progress of events is now thrusting into the front, not merely of theoretical discussion, but of practical statesmanship, problems which definitely separate these two kinds of political economists, and put in evidence the broad distinction between them. Such is, in a peculiar degree, the question of Land Tenure, in Ireland and in England.

The Irish land difficulty having shown, by painful experience, that there is at least one nation closely connected with our own, which cannot and will not bear to have its agricultural economy ruled by the universal maxims which some of our political economists challenge all mankind to disobey at their peril; it has begun to dawn upon an increasing number of understandings, that some of these universal maxims are perhaps not universal at all, but merely English customs; and a few have begun to doubt whether, even as such, they have any claim to the transcendent excellence ascribed to them. The question has been raised whether the administration of the land of a country is a subject to which our current maxims of free trade, free contract, the exclusive power of every one over his own property, and so forth, are really applicable, or applicable without very serious limitations; whether private individuals ought to have the same absolute control, the same jus utendi et abutendi, over landed property, which it is just and expedient that they should be permitted to exercise over movable wealth.

Once fairly raised, this question admits of but one answer. The distinction between the two kinds of property is fundamental.

In the first place, land is a monopoly, not by the act of man, but of nature; it exists in limited quantity, not susceptible of increase. Now it is an acknowledged principle that when the State permits a monopoly, either natural or artificial, to fall into private hands, it retains the right, and cannot divest itself of the duty, to place the exercise of the monopoly under any degree of control which is requisite for the public good.

This control, moreover, is likely to be peculiarly needful, when the State has allowed private persons to appropriate the source from which mankind derive, and must continue to derive, their subsistence. The community has too much at stake in the employment of the land as an instrument for the supply of human wants, to be entitled to

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