THE MAGAZINES.

THE magazines are good this month. We have already noticed at length Mr. Gladstone's paper on Ireland in the Contemporary, and Mr. Leonard Courtney's essay on "The Swarming of Men" in the Nineteenth Century, and there is in this latter another article which will be read with pleasure by all who can enjoy literature. In it Mr. John Morley defends himself against the charge of being a Revolutionist of the French Jacobin type. He smiles at the parallel drawn between himself and St. Just, and asks how, in pleading for the autonomy of Ireland, he resembles any Jacobin whose leading idea was to suppress local privileges and particularities, if necessary, in blood. He declares that he described the Social Contract as at once "shallow and mischievous ;" that his ideal is not any Jacobin or even French- man, but rather Washington ; and that he is deeply sensible not only of the rectitude, but of the necessity of Opportunism :—

"What these opinions came to, roughly speaking, was something to this effect : That the power alike of statesmen and of publicists over the course of affairs is strictly limited ; that institutions and movements are not capable of immediate or indefinite modification by any amount of mere will ; that political truths are always relative, and never absolute ; that the test of practical, political, or social proposals is not their conformity to abstract ideals, but to con- venience, utility, expediency, and occasion ; that for the reformer, considerations of time and place may be paramount; and finally, as Mill himself has put it, that government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society, and that what this power is, and shall be, depends less on institutions than institutions depend upon it. If I were pressed for an illustration of these principles at work, inspiring the minds and guiding the practice of responsible statesmen in great transactions of our own day and generation, I should point to the sage, the patient, the triumphant action of Abraham Lincoln in the emancipation of the negro slaves. However that may be, contrast a creed of this kind with the abstract, absolute, geometric, unhistoric, peremptory notions and reasonings that formed the stock-in- trade of most, though not quite all, of the French revolutionists, alike in action and in thought. It is plain that they are the direct opposite and contradictory of one

another."

We welcome those declarations, even if they are flecked with a certain toleration for immoral methods when directed towards what he thinks good ends, which we must say we perceive in

many of Mr. Morley's writings. He may say that in using the phrase "sombre acquiescence" to describe Danton's attitude towards the Septembriseurs, he only describes, without defending; but if there had been no pardon in his heart, would he have thought of that singularly tolerant phrase P —Cardinal Man- ning's "Plea for the Worthless" seems to us fitter for a disciple of Victor Hugo than for a Roman Cardinal. We quite admit the duty of compassion and of effort to save the worth- less; but we do not believe that society "is guilty of the ruin of its offspring." If it is so, who is responsible for the immense majority of decent people ? The Cardinal says :—

"The bloated and brutal man, if he had been nurtured by a loving mother in a pure home St for man to live in ; if he had grown up in the consciousness of a divine law and presence ; if be had lived in honest labour, found as a rule in the labour market, or as an excep- tion, in times of distress, provided by the compassion of a wise charity, or of a law wisely and charitably admiuistered—he would not have become the wreck in body, mind, and speech, which we may see in our streets every day."

True, perhaps, though there are thousands of scoundrels who were brought up under all those influences ; but is it not exactly like saying that if all were good, there would be no need for a Church ? If there is no personal responsibility, but it can all be shifted off on to a formless entity called" Society," which, be it observed, does not demoralise the majority,—what is sin, and, indeed, what is Christianity either ? The poor man is just as responsible as the rich, and except the single temptation to steal, has no additional temptations. There is no poverty like that of many villages in Southern England or Northern Scotland, where no one locks a door, and violent crime is nn- known.—Mr. Marcus B. Huish deplores the decay of art in Japan, which he attributes to the rage for cheapness, and the interference of the ignorant purchaser with the skilled artist.

It is the old story ; but in Japan, as in Europe, the demand for first.rate work will revive, and with it excellence. What we should like to know is, what it is in the Japanese which gives him his almost instinctive sense of perfect work, and leaves the European, who is so much his superior in many things, almost without it ? What induced him to wish for the sword- handle of which Mr. Hnish gives so enthusiastic an account ?

There is no use in inlaying of that perfect kind, and what induced the artist to expend such time on it ? Pay ? Then what induced the purchaser P—Mrs. Acland's "American Notes" are attractive, because, though thin, they are so obviously genuine impressions. This account, of which we are constantly receiving confirmation, will be new to most of our readers :—

"The second burning question in Eastern Canada is that of the French Canadians. It is curious that while in France itself popula- tion is notoriously at a standstill, or even declining, in Lower Canada it is advancing by leaps and bounds. Families of twelve and fourteen children are not uncommon, and the English are literally being gradually squeezed out. The members of the local Parliament are almost entirely French ; the speeches are made in French ; official notices are published in French—usually, but not always, with an English translation. In the streets of Quebec a policeman could not understand a question asked in English, much less reply to it ; and in the depression of trade caused by the comparative failure of the local lumber business, the French are buying up lands and houses as fast as they are vacated by the English merchants ; so that while, as I have said, the French-Canadian population increases, the English diminishes in almost equal proportion. The farms are of course in French bands, and worked on the French system of subdivision among all the children, so that the holdings are getting smaller and smaller, and the poor people live in great poverty, and are unable to supply the dressings and manure which might make the land pay. The soil is not rich in this province, and has long been exhausted by the system of farming which prevails ; but only when it is absolutely impossible any longer to obtain even a meagre livelihood will the family break up and migrate to the towns, to seek employment there."

The gradual disappearance of the English language in French Canada is, as far as we know, an unique phenomenon, though we are told that in certain valleys of the Tyrol, Italian is, in a similar way, slowly eating out German. The usual theory is that the Teuton absorbs, and is not absorbed ; but it is not universally true, as, for example, in Wales.—Lord Thring's paper on "Local Government" is an exhaustive account of local

government as it exists, and is penetrated with feeling for historic divisions. He believes the task of introducing a new system will be enormous, and would facilitate it to the utmost by retaining, wherever possible, all that is old. We

agree with that in principle ; but the worship of antiquity must not be allowed to interfere with practical reform. We

cannot, for example, leave the county enclaves, the bits of one county dropped about in another. They are of great historical interest, for they were originally scattered conquests ; but they must go.—Mr. Phelps finishes an admirable account of the Constitution of the United States by a sketch showing beyond doubt that the essence of tbat Constitution, its regulating machine, without which it could not work, is the Supreme Court, an institution entirely lacking in this Kingdom, and which has built up in the Union a reverence for the document which has all the strength and most of the utility of loyalty.

Mr. Henry Danckley ("Verax "), in the Contemporary, answers Mr. Froude's book on the West Indies with great moderation and force. He maintains that our recent government of the islands has succeeded, and adduces in proof the happiness of the Negroes, which is admitted by Mr. Fronde, and seems to be un- doubted, and their extreme loyalty to the British Government, as against the only alternative—annexation to the United States. He does not, however, fairly meet the real difficulty, which is that the whites are departing. When they have gone, the blacks will be alone, and it seems to be shown that Negroes, free from the vivifying presence of the white man, fall back into the barbarism of Africa. Is it our duty to allow that, merely for the sake of what is called their "happiness P" The alternative would seem to be "Indian government"—that is, a strictly regulated white despotism for a few generations—but this we understand Mr. Dunekley to repudiate.—Sir Lyon Playfair endorses the theory of the American economist, Mr. Wells, that the main cause of the fall in prices, with the depression that results from it, has been the application of science to trade, especially in the improvement of communications. The reduc- tion in the cost of haulage, in particular, has been so enormous that a few hundred pounds of coal now do the work of 15,000 pounds :— "The cost of transit of a ton of wheat from Calcutta to England was 71s. 3d. in 1881 and 27s. in 1885. The haulage of a thousand miles, from Chicago to New York, brings a whole year's supply of food for a man at a coat of a single day's wage. A ton is hauled for less than a farthing per mile. Tbe fall in the prices of ocean transit from New York to Liverpool has been as follows :— 1830. 1886.

Grain, per bushel 9td. id.

Flour, per ton ... 253.

Cheese 503. Cotton, per pound ... id. 15g. Cotton, 6d.

Bacon and lard, per ton 45s. 7s. 6d."

Those figures of themselves suffice to explain the depression in agriculture, and it is the same in manufactures, chemistry alone having cheapened production often by three-fourths. The burden of the fall, Sir Lyon Playfair thinks, falls mainly upon unskilled labour, and he desires to change it as far as possible into skilled labour by a wide extension of technical education.—The review of " Garibaldi's Memoirs," by Karl Blind, will startle a good many, proving, as they do, that Garibaldi condoned political assassination when committed, as it were, instinctively, as in the murder of Rossi, and that his great trouble with his volunteers was their liability to extraordinary bursts of panic. He evidently believed in his heart in drill, and thought the German soldiers the finest in the world. The best men in his service were gentlemen ; and he never, from first to last, was joined by any peasant.—Mr. G. T. Bettany dreams of a time when the United States of America, unburdened with the cost of maintaining armies, will become too powerful for Europe, and forgets both the chance that the Union may one day break up, and that the States may have immense problems of their own to solve ; one, the Socialistic one, which will require the devotion of much of the national strength. The Negro question even may seriously occupy them, if, as Mr. G. W. Cable says in his article upon it, the blacks are already seven millions in the South, and resent bitterly their exclusion by the whites from all social equality. Mr. Cable found them absolutely excluded even from the tramcars, and from any building used by white men. The whites will even let their children grow up in ignorance rather than let them sit on the same school-benches with blacks. —The most striking paper in this number, however, is the account of "Mystical Pessimism in Russia," by N. Tsakni. So pessimist is feeling in Russia, that, according to this writer, almost any sect succeeds if only it is only pessimist enough,—that is, if it teaches the abandonment of this world and its pleasures either through asceticism, or self-mutilation, or suicide. About twenty years ago, for example, there arose in the forest government of Penn a sect headed by a peasant named Khodkine. Khodkine taught that the only way of salvation was to make an end of this life of sin and ignominy. He carried his disciples into the forest, where they dug catacombs and sewed graveclothes, and then he directed them to die of hunger : "Then began the interminable days of horrible suffering for these wretches. Tortured by hanger and thirst, women and children cried loudly for a few drops of water. The children's sufferings touched the hearts of some of the fanatics, who knelt to their chief praying him to have pity on these little ones. Bat Khodkine was immovable. Tears, prayers, and suffering did not touch him, and the children writhed in agony, sucking the grass, chewing fern-fronds, or swallowing sand. Two of the fanatics could not endure this sight, and fled during the darkness of the night. This frightened Khodkine, and be resolved to hasten the death which was so long in coming. The hour of death has come : are you ready ? ' he asked. We are ready,' replied the unhappy people, all their strength exhausted. Then they began to massacre the children. The bodies of the victims were buried in the earth, and the survivors decided to continue their fast. But the fugitives had had time to warn the police, and they came to the place. Hearing the steps of men approaching, and being unwilling to give themselves up alive into the hands of the servants of Antichrist, the fanatics reached the height of their religions madness, swore to shed their blood for Christ, and abandoned themselves to horrible carnage. They began by killing the women with hatchets, then they put an end to the men most weakened by hunger, and the leader, Khodkine, and three others were the sole survivors. They saw the police and tried to escape into the forest, but were caught and delivered into the hands of justice."

A few years ago, a monk named Falare preached suicide on the bank of the Volga, and eighty-four persons tried to burn them- selves alive. One who was saved by the police recommenced the propaganda, and his "teaching was very successful." "More than sixty persons in the same locality decided to give them- selves to a voluntary death. Among them were whole families, fathers, mothers, children. They no longer chose the forest to carry out their design, but on a day fixed beforehand the massacre took place in the peasants' izba. Peasant P. entered the house of his neighbour N., killed his wife and children ; then, still armed with his hatchet, he entered the barn where other fanatics were waiting for him with their wives, who calmly put their heads on the block, while P. played the part of executioner. Then he went to another izba, that of the peasant-woman W., and killed her and her kinswomen, while an accomplice killed their children. Then the accomplice put his head on the block, begging P. to cut it off. P. in his turn was killed by the peasant T. Thirty-five persons thus perished. A woman passing by was terrified at the spectacle and ran quickly to give the alarm." The "Negators," who are numerous, push Nihilism to its logical conclusions, deny that property can exist, reject marriage on account of its exclusiveness, refuse to take any service, and will not work, leading an entirely vagabond life. For these ideas, they submit to any torture, whether from the State or individuals, against whom they refuse to appeal to the law. The only deduction drawn by the writer from these accounts is that Russian society is in a state of fermentation ; but we should add that there must be in the Slav character a power of self- suppression which, though common in the East, is phenomenal in Europe. These people are only fakirs, after all.

The Fortnightly is not very lively. Sir Charles Mike con- tinues his papers on the British Army with a sketch of what it would be if he could have his way. As usual, he is suggestive ; bat the majority of readers will, we fancy, place more confidence in the opinions of professional experts. Sir Charles's advice that we should separate our European and Asiatic Armies is, we believe, sound ; but he hardly realises, we think, the full diffi- culties, or the impression left upon governing men by the White Mutiny. That strange incident had a secret history, which alarmed those who knew it ten times as much as the Mutiny itself.—Archdeacon Farrar states the "Social Problem" very well, though with too much apprehensiveness ; but we do not see that he suggests any practical remedy, except later marriage, which does not solve the social problem in France at all.—Mr. Henry James writes a long review of Gay de Manpassant, the worst of the Zola school, from which we can gather nothing, except that he imagines the realistic school to be right in their method, wrong in applying it mainly to the animal side of life. That is true, but it has been said, though possibly not so well, very often before.—Lord Monkswell's argument for State colonisation consists mainly of evidence that good emigrants, carefully looked after, usually succeed, which is perfectly true, but not very helpful ; and Mr. Wentworth Webster'e account of the privileges enjoyed by many divisions of North-Western Spain, though curious and in part new, will not add much to the arguments for or against Home-rule. Spain cannot be quoted as proof of the success or failure of any system. The country has not succeeded, yet it has done enormous work in the world. The Spanish idea of the Basque fneros, says Mr. Webster, is that they work excellently in the privileged provinces, brit have cost Spain two wars and two hundred thousand men. We may add that they have kept the Basques outside the general intellectual movement of Europe.

Mr. E. Salmon believes, apparently, in the extinction of domestic service in England, unless mistresses become kinder. The relation, he says, is becoming too purely one of contract. That is true enough ; but relations of contract often last a long

time, and that although the parties to them criticise one another very severely. His hint that the pension system might greatly improve domestic service is thoroughly sound, but very, difficult of application. Death breaks up most English households.

We fear Mr. Matthew Arnold will not obtain much support for his proposal in the National Review to cure the Dissenting grievance in Wales. He wishes that in counties like Cardigan, where Nonconformists form the bulk of the population, the tithe and the churches, cathedrals excepted, should be handed over to them. Their ministers should be appointed by the State, with a right of veto left to the congregations. The first answer to that proposition is, that the Nonconformists would not accept it ; and the second, that it would secure no end. The " Establishment " so organised would not be a Church in any sense of the word, and would present endless new and per- plexing problems. It is open, of course, to the State to endow all Churches which will accept endowment ; but it can only establish one territorially, and must impose on that one the duty of ministering to every one who asks its aid. It is because the English Church will do this that it is just to support it out of national property ; but would any other Church accept this function P—The paper against Homceopathy, by "R. B. C.," is unusually effective. The writer draws the principal illustra- tions of his argument from his experience as an oculist, and one or two of them appear to be irrefragable. What, for instance, can be the answer to this ?—

" There is, however, one form of gradually progressive blindness which is attended by a true symptom of a marked character. The patient will probably complain only of failure of sight ; but if the precise conditions of this failure are investigated, they will be found to include loss or impairment of vision for green, limited to a well- defined portion of the centre of the field of vision, that is, only dis- coverable when the green object is in front of the eye or nearly so. This central impairment or loss of vision for green, occurring in a person not previously colour-blind, and accompanying some general impairment of sight, is itself a true symptom ; and it is, moreover, a symptom which becomes, to instructed persons, a sign indicative of the nature of the case. It denotes that the impending blindness is due to the excessive use of tobacco ; and it points out the method of cure, which is to be found in the entire abandonment of the drug. We have here a perfect example of a symptom which is produced by a medicinal agent ; and of a condition in which the relations of cause and effect arc maintained throughout. If the patient continues

to smoke, he will become blind ; if he abandons smoking, he will recover ; and the speed at which blindness, in the former case, will become complete, will mainly depend upon the quantity of tobacco which he consumes. Now, I should like to know whether any homcoa- path, in such conditions, and assuming him to be aware of them, would venture to permit the continuance of smoking ; or would supplement the abandonment of tobacco, which it would be his duty to enjoin, by its administration in even infinitesimal doses."

—The inquiry, "Who are the English People' " by "An Englishman," is nothing but the general argument against democracy rather badly stated ; and Mrs. H. Fawcett, who writes on "Women's Suffrage," hardly understands the precise limits of moral force. She does not tell us what she would do if the women, who are a majority, shut the public-houses, and the men, who are a minority, rose in insurrection. Does she think "moral force "would give the women a victory ?—The Hon. G. N. Curzon argues well for a purification of the House of Lords, to which we all agree, but postpones the suggestion of a feasible method, which is what we all wait for.—We gather from Mr. Mick Burke's paper on Cyprus that we have made the island orderly, that we have in some degree improved the tenure, that we have made a road or two, and that we have "nearly " extirpated the locusts. Mr. R. Mattei had noticed that the locusts, before they can fly, cross the country in armies, and never turn aside. He therefore "hit upon the ingenious expedient of barring their progress when actually on the march, by means of long canvas screens put up on stakes and furnished at the top with a baud of varnished leather, or what is called American cloth. Deep pits are dug at intervals of some few yards on the side of these screens facing the advancing hosts, and the locusts, reaching the obstacle, and being unable to surmount it, owing to the polished surface on the upper edge, fall down and are caught in the pits, which are themselves edged and lined to a depth of a few inches with polished zinc." The locusts are embed in the pith by their own weight, and the numbers slain in 1883-84 are estimated at 250,000,000,000, at a cost of about 2s. a million. This is a boon to the people ; but our government of Cyprus strikes us as being rather too quiet, the difficulty, no doubt, being partly want of money, and partly a lurking idea in the breasts of statesmen that we shall not in the end retain the island.