SOME PAPERS IN THE MAGAZINES.

LORD SHERBROOKE'S (Mr. Lowe's) paper on "Legislation for Ireland," in the Nineteenth Century, comes to this,—that there should be no legislation for Ireland, but that the laws should be carried out. He is entirely opposed to coercion and to the sus- pension of ordinary liberties—a fact, by the way, carefully suppressed by most of those who quote him—and even to the "proclaiming" of particular districts. He holds that every such act is a confession that every man's hand is against the Government, and by exciting sympathy for the sufferers tends to invest criminals with many of the attributes of heroes fighting for justice, a profound truth, too often overlooked. But he would pass no agrarian laws, holds Irish landlords and tenants to be only persons who have entered into contract with each other, and demands that they should be let alone. The reason the tenant claims no security for his improve- ments is that he gives no security for his rent, and the first result of giving him security by law will be that the land- lord will not let him any land. Giving him anything other than his contract is, in Lord Sherbrooke's eyes, injustice, and should not be done, more especially now that agitation has grown formidable, " it being more important that the law should be certain than that it should be strictly just." This is, of course, a direct attack on the Land Law of 1870, which treats the tenant as a partner in the ownership, which Mr. Lowe him- self helped to pass, and it is based upon two fallacies. One is, that there can be absolute freedom of contract about any- thing indispensable to national existence ; the other is, that freedom of contract is impaired when absolute owner- ship is changed into restricted ownership. For reasons of State, considered sufficient by the people, the landlord's absolute property in land has been changed into restricted property. How does that impair freedom of contract P The landlord is as free to contract about what he owns as before. He only owns less, just as a tenant for life under settlement owns less than a freeholder. Whether he ought to be deprived of his rights for the public good is a great question, but is not the question of the utility of freedom of contract, and is, we think, settled by universal practice even in England. It is the

landlord's claim to compensation which, under our manners, should be discussed, not the claim of the State to expro- priate rights. The claim to compensation would be most for- midable, indeed irresistible, were it not that security is supposed to be a compensation acceptable to the sufferers, if only it is ob- tained. Mr. A. R. Grant's paper on" Competitive Examinations" seems at first to be a rather trite essay on the superiority of pass examinations to competition ; but there is a thought in it Mr. Grant would compel all candidates to reach a moderate standard, and then choose among them by an examination testing intellect and originality, and not knowledge. Where would he find his examiners, or how distribute marks P Mr. Mallock, on "The Philosophy of Conservatism," is not very profound or original. Most of his views have appeared during every week of this century in most Conservative organs. He says Radicalism, as distinguished from Liberalism, is a de- structive principle, and appeals to the imagination rather than the reason, and would destroy civilisation in search of equality. But his argument in proof of this is only the assertion that the motive-power of civilisation is the desire of each man to "signalise himself by getting a special and unequal share of some kind of property," which is merely the old idea that accumulation is the condition of progress. We do not believe, nor do many Radicals, in equality, but Mr. Mallock's theory goes absurdly far. It would make of inequality a cause of civilisation, and so assume that amidst the frightful inequalities which exist in Asia, civi- lisation must be more developed than in the comparative equali- ties of France or Switzerland. The truth is, that the first con- dition of civilisation of any true kind is the reign of Justice, and justice tends to produce, though it does not wholly produce, equality. Mr. Mallock defends the House of Lords, because he says it is incorruptible. We want, he says, legislators "Incapable of being seduced by ambitions of the lower kind. Human nature, however, being what it is, there is but one way by which a man becomes thus incapable, and that is by having such ambitions more or less gratified to start with. Now, a class to whom power, wealth, and con- sideration come by birth, and without any exertion of its own, is a class that supplies us with a type of man like this."

The Roman patricians, with their vast wealth and splendid position, were the most corrupt of mankind ; while the English clergy, the least paid or considered of all professionals, are pro- bably the least so. The truth is that as a man with millions is frequently a gambler, a rich noble has objects, especially power and distinction, which corrupt him as money corrupts the bourgeoisie. An oligarchy, which is the outcome of Mr.

Mallock's argument, invariably becomes corrupt. It was not a democracy, but an oligarchy of slave-owners which fought for slavery because it paid. If it had not paid,

it would have been abandoned at once. Major Hallett, in his short but curious paper on " Our New Wheat-fields at Home," affirms that it is possible for the farmer to beat his American competitor, by planting grains of wheat early in September, and nine inches apart every way. They will yield twelve times as many ears as grains placed in the ordinary way. As, supposing Major Hallett 'right, the American can sow on his plan, we do not see the bearing of his remark on competition, and we want to know something about cost. Does he mean to say that he can get more grains without more exhaustion of the soil requir- ing to be repaired by manure P The remainder of the number is a little dull, though Mr. Harrison is, as before, eloquent in his discussion on " The Creeds : Old and New," and, as before, makes some most extraordinary assertions :—

" But now, since science has surrounded our lives with such a con- current mass of correlated law, and this sense of law is so widespread and familiar to the daily thought of the most ignorant ; now, since our social existence has so developed, and has so clothed with noble colours the free resources of man's manifold powers, now it is simply impossible to find the Creator in every thought, God in every act. The most mystical of theologians, the most austere of devotees, does not ask us to do so. Common-sense is too overwhelming to be re- sisted. Piety itself adopts its language ; orthodox authority depre- cates the exaggeration of theology. The Pope alone holds out, and discharges a Syllabus now and then. But bishops, priests, and dea- cons, for the most part, sweep theology away from the whole field of systematic thought and active life. Science, they say, explains the laws of nature and the laws of society; social motives are an adequate explanation of worldly activity. All we ask, say they, as sensible theologians, is to reserve the idea of God and the Scheme of man's Salvation for the hours that are given to meditation and prayer, to the spiritual sphere alone."

We venture to say there is not a Christian theologian in Eng- land, from Cardinal Newman to Mr. E. White, who does not assert the exact reverse of the statement in the concluding lines.

Where does Mr. Harrison find his Bishops, priests, and deacons, with their theory of religion for the closet, and not for every- day life P The most interesting paper in the Fortnightly this month is Mr. Herbert Spencer's, on "Political Institutions," which, though only introductory, is full of incidental suggestion. He states, but does not explain, the very strange fact that there exist savage races which seem better in many moral qualities—truthfulness, for example, and honesty—than civilised races, and races which seem to obtain from civilisation no trace of the milder qualities.

The Sonthal never lies, the Lepcha never steals, while the Roman at the height of his grandeur found no spectacle so delightful as human slaughter in the Arena. He supposes, therefore, that while ferocity helps in the great struggle for survival, when it has done its work it need not itself survive

"Mark, now, however, that while this merciless discipline of Nature, `red in tooth and claw,' has been essential to the evolution of sentient life, its persistence through all time with all creatures must not be inferred. The high organisation evolved by and for this universal conflict, is not necessarily for ever employed to like ends ; the result- ing power and intelligence admit of being far otherwise employed. Not for offence and defence only are the inherited structures useful, but for various other purposes ; and these various other purposes may finally become the exclusive purposes. The myriads of years of warfare which have developed the powers of all lower types of crea- tures, have bequeathed to the highest type of creature the powers now used by him for countless objects besides those of killing and avoiding being killed. His teeth sad nails are but little employed in fight ; and his mind is not ordinarily occupied in devising ways of destroying other creatures, or guarding himself from injury by them."

Bismarck, in Mr. Spencer's eyes, is clearly not the highest pro- duct, though a useful one. He even ventures to imagine that, although powerful communities have been evolved by battle, the time may arrive when, battle being needless, the brutality which produces it will disappear. That is not as yet the teaching of history, nor are we clear, considering that the Athenian has gone and the Chinese remains, that the most competent races do survive ; but Mr. Spencer, letting his mind enjoy its faculty of generalisation, is always worthy study. Mr. Stillman bears strong testimony to the qualities of the Greeks, whom he declares to be less untruthful and dishonest than the Italians and Turks, while they are distinctly superior even to Western men in matters of sexual morality ; but is in favour of a radical reconstitution of the country upon the Swiss cantonal plan, a scheme which seems a little outside discussion at a moment when the very existence of Greece is in imminent peril. He maintains that Crete is better governed than Greece, and that the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands, deprived of their local liberties, begin to regret the lenient English rule. The answer to that is, of course, that nothing Greek rebels against Greece, but it is quite possible that the spirit of localism may have its foundation in the Greek character, which is individual, fond of management, and curiously defective in reverence. Mr. Murrongh O'Brien bears strong testimony to the willingness of Irish peasants who have bought their own lands to keep their contracts of pay- ment. Mr. F. Cunliffe Owen utters some gloomy prophe- cies about the chance of Switzerland being conquered; and Mr. C. F. Cromie gives us spirited sketches of " Jomini, Moreau, and Vandamme." The latter General is very little known to Englishmen. He was a native of Cassel, near Dun- kirk, entered the Army young, and rose to high command under Napoleon, who, nevertheless, pronounced him the "greatest blackguard in the French Army." He was not that, but was of the type of the worst French soldiers, a haughty, brave, competent plunderer, who could not be made a Marshal, but who, when captured by the Russians and brought face to face with the Czar, defied him to his face. He was, however, completely dominated by Napoleon. " Mon cher," said Van- damme, a few years later, to one of his comrades, " ce diable d'homme, l'Empereur, exerce sur moi nue fascination dont je ne phis me rendre compte; c'est an point que moi, qui ne crams ni Dieu ni Diable, quand je l'approche, je anis pret it trembler comme un enfant; it me ferait passer par le tron d'une aignille pour slier me jeter an fen." On the other hand, Napoleon re- marked, shortly after the battle of Austerlitz, " Vandamme is very precious to me, for if ever I have occasion to make war against the Infernal Regions, he is the only General I have who would be capable of tackling the Devil."

The most interesting article in the Contemporary is discussed elsewhere, but the number is full of moderately good papers. We cannot class among them Mr. A. R. Wallace's plan for radically solving the Irish problem, because we do not believe that Par-

liament will ever vote the estates of a landlord who dies without near relatives to the State, or that the Act would have any effect if it did. The owner would sell it while living, and if he disliked moving, take a life-tenancy, with right to waste. Nor do we believe that Parliament will ever consent that " a law shall be enacted by which all landed property in Ireland shall legally descend for four gener- ations beyond the misting owner, and then pass to the State." The postulate is absurd, and it is waste of time to discuss any theory built upon it. Mr. Wallace forgets altogether that even to tempt Parliament to discuss such a proposal there must be a. public outcry for it, and whence is an outcry to come for a. particular disposition of land which will reduce its value from year to year and enrich nobody except the State, and not that till the great-grandchild of the owner is dead P Such proposals belong to the region of dreams. Mr. Bain's extraordinary pro- position for the improvement of the procedure of deliberative bodies must, we fear, be placed in the same category. It is, in brief, that the mover of a motion, proposer of a Bill, or other Mem- ber taking an initiative, should not speak, but should circulate his speech to the Members, thus allowing oral debate only to those who reply. He would extend this practice even to debate in Committee, and sweep away the power of interpellation and movement by individuals altogether. None of these suggestions will be adopted. They all proceed from the same thought,—that Parliament is only a legislating body and not also a deliberat- ing body, and they all tend to end in a new system, under which

Members would vote inside Parliament and debate outside of it. They all require, too, that power should be entrusted to a different class of Members, to the men who ought to be

journalists, instead of the men who ought to be orators,—that is, in fact, to the men who will not win constituencies.

Imagine Mr. Gladstone sending in his Budget as an essay, instead of bringing it out as a speech. It is useless to discuss 'such a proposal, for it is condemned by a sort of instinct as much as by reason, and will never be seriously discussed. Landlords will read with much greater interest Mr. Steadman Aldis's exposition of his reasons for thinking that there will be a severe lowering of farm rents in England. They amount only to this,—that the competition of America will make English farming unprofitable; but they are scientifically set forth, and owners will be interested to know that in Mr. Aldis's opinion the fall may be so heavy that they may have to cultivate themselves, or sell to small peasant proprietors who will cultivate without reference to commercial return. Mr. Aldis looks for compensation to the increase of manufacturing industry, but suppose we already manufacture all the articles of necessity which the world wants to buy ? Pessimist landlords should read this article, and doubt, for the first time in their lives, if land in England is the safest of all investments. Pessimism, indeed, is a rather marked feature of this number of the Contemporary, for Mr. W. Clarke, in an article marked by eloquence as well as ability, contends that the idea of Canada entering a federated British Empire is nonsense; that she neither can nor will, and that her natural destiny is to enter the American Union. Why should she, he asks in fact, seek place in an empire across the Atlantic, when she can enter an empire as close to her in blood and feeling just at her own doors P Canada and England, he maintains, are radically different :—

" Cordial alliance, intimate and friendly union, are within their reach ; but the hard facts of Nature forbid any closer tie. Intimacy is possible ; a common nationality is impossible. Mr. Anderson says that Canada must be allowed to feel through all her nerves and fibres that she has a share in our national life, that she contributes in some way to the framing of our imperial policy, and that she partici- pates fully in our greatness and glory.' Well, so far as I am aware, no British statesman has any desire to prevent Canada from feeling all this, if she can. There is no question of allowing ;' the question is of her ability to share in another life than hers. The great ques- tion for England is, bow to get rid of her feudal and monarchical remains in the easiest way, and with the least tnrmoil, so as to per- mit the free growth of the new Commonwealth. But this question has no interest for Canada. She has no feudalism, no monarchy, no official priesthood, no hereditary chamber. Her institutions are democratic, born of the present, the outcome of the new life and political genius of our age. The two peoples are different in their circumstances, their environment, their political and social customs, their habitual thought and sentiment. We can no more transport English life, English national feeling, to American soil, and keep it so, than we can transport our humid atmosphere, our cold summers, our November fogs. If we send out emigrants from England, in a few years they will have become American. The structure of their minds, the cast of their thought, will have been modified by the new life in the New World, with its new wants and its new habits. Now, although great changes are in preparation at home, although the

Established Church and hereditary system will shortly be attacked with great vigour, and doubtless with ultimate success, yet it is highly probable that the stubborn and vigorous Conservatism of England will for many years be able to resist the Radical onset."

Mr. Baldwin Brown's paper, on " The Relation of Christian Belief to National Life," seems originally to have been a lecture It is very eloquent and full of suggestive paragraphs, of which we extract one, on the momentarily exalted character, as of a new religion, which science has assumed :-

" In our own day, bow near does the temperance movement come to be a religion to the most enthusiastic of its advocates, while its hymns enter into something like rivalry with the hymnal of the Church. And so this young science, in the vigour of its lusty child- hood, offers itself as a religion to its disciples. It claims, as Dante says of wisdom, every part of the man as its own. Perhaps, consti- tuted as we are, in the absence of the stimulus which Christianity aapplies, it would be impossible to maintain at full pressure that heroic devotion to research which so many of its disciples manifest, and out of which such benediction is to spring, unless they believed with their whole hearts that it is the 'one thing needful,' and that it contains the whole secret of life and of the world. Science is in the stage which corresponds to the fanatical in all great moral move- ments; it claims all provinces as its own, and will have absolute and exclusive away over men. We may await its coming to its right mind with composure, sure that this intense and noble devotion to the quest of one form of truth will not be without high moral as well as intellectual influence on society. A fact is to Science a sacred thing. She searches for what is, with a persistency and honesty -which put many loud-voiced champions of the truth to shame ; and who dares question that it will be the means of leading her at length into just relations with the whole body of truth, and then the har- mony of science with a theology which has Christ as its centre, and not the Creeds, will be restored ?"

The object of the entire paper is to show that Christianity has always been an invaluable factor in the national life, and always will be one ; and except that Mr. Brown attaches a certain .economic value to Christianity, and brings that incidentally into disagreeable prominence, we can agree with every word of it. This is admirable :—

" And now about what are called the Quaker virtues. It is asserted that the Quaker doctrine is in the Sermon on the Mount, and that a nation of Quakers in a world like this must quickly be broken up and destroyed. Well, that is quite true, if you take merely the negations. A community which simply agreed never to fight, never to resist, never to swear, never to go to law, and always to let the thief have coat as well as cloak, would speedily perish, and the sooner the better. They would be a company of intolerable prigs, and the sooner they were broken up the better for them, and the better for the world. Bat find a community of men and women so full of love to God and to His law, that the lightest word of His lip was dearer to them 'than thousands of gold and silver ;' so full of belief that righteous. ness must triumph, that they cared not to lay a hand on so base and 'brutal an instrument as the sword to help it ; so full of tender love to sinning and sorrowing men, that their own suffering under wrong seemed to thorn as nothing compared with the misery which the wrong-doer laid up for himself, and willing to bear patiently any measure of injury, in the hope of bringing some softening, purifying, spiritual influence to bear on the transgressor's heart ;—find such a community, and you will find something which will unspeakably purify and uplift the world. It would win for itself the mastery of violence and brutality, and would mightily help forward the progress of the kingdom which 'is righteousness, and therefore peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' "

All the same, we do not care a straw whether Quakers make money, or Methodist workmen have more umbrellas than non- Christian workmen. Let them have less umbrellas, as they might have, for instance, if they were persecuted, and Christi- anity would be as before. The smug virtues are good virtues, but we hate to see a man like Mr. Baldwin Brown praising them. They praise themselves quite enough.

The best paper among the lighter magazines is, we think, Mr. R. L. Stevenson's, in Fraser, on " The Old Pacific Capital," a description of Monterey quite charming in the felicity of its phrases, and the kind of sultry melancholy, as of Mexico itself, with which the writer has contrived to invest his style. No one, we suppose, cares particularly about Monterey, but any- body who cares about strange life must read with interest the account of the forest fires ; and to anybody who understands poetry, this paragraph will be attractive :—

" The one common note of all this country is the haunting pre- sence of the ocean. A great, faint sound of breakers follows you high up into the inland canyons ; the roar of water dwells in the clean, empty rooms of Monterey as in a shell upon the chimney ; go where you will, you have but to pause and listen to hear the voice of the Pacific. You pass out of the town to the south- west, and mount the hill among pine-woods. Glade, thicket, and grove surround you. You follow winding sandy tracts that lead nowhither. You see a deer : a multitude of quail arises. Ent the sound of the sea still follows you as you advance, like that of the wind among the trees, only harsher and stranger to the ear ; and when at length you gain the summit, out breaks on every hand and with freshened vigour that same un- ending, distant, whispering.rumble of the ocean ; for now you are on the top of Monterey peninsula, and the noise no longer only mounts to you from behind along the beach towards Santa CM; but from your right also, round by Chinatown and Pintas lighthouse, and from down before you to the mouth of the Carmello river. The whole woodland is begirt with thundering surges. The silence that imme- diately surrounds you where you stand is not so much broken as it is haunted by this distant, circling rumour. It sets your senses upon edge ; you strain your attention ; you are clearly and unusually con- scious of small sounds near at hand ; you walk listening like an Indian hunter ; and that voice of the Pacific is a sort of disquieting company to you in your walk."

There is a pleasant description, too, by Professor Gibb, of "The Heliand," the old Saxon poem on " The Life of Christ," written in the time of Louis the Debonair, and full of genuine poetry, as well as of strange variations on the view of Christ, whom the author evidently thought of as a gracious King, surrounded by captains and pious men, marching through the land and dis- pensing counsel and good gifts. His version of the story, though amplified, differs little from the received one save in this,—that the Devil, frightened lest the death of Christ should save mankind, alarmed the wife of Pilate through a dream. The poem, long translations from which are given by the Professor, affords a curious glimpse into the kind of impression which the Divine story would make upon a con- verted barbarian who received it wholly. There is no other paper of mark that we detect, though Mrs. Edwards sends to Macmillan, from Ceylon, a curious " devil " story,—the devil audibly felling trees round the house which were not felled; but the magazines are unusually full of good stories. "Dr. Wortle's School," in Blackwood, is as good, though very quiet, as anything Mr. Trollope has done ; nothing can be more deli- cate than Mr. James's " Portrait of a Lady," in Macmillan ; and

we, at least, have genuine enjoyment in the quiet, gentle pathos and fine insight of " My Faithful Johnny," in the Corn-

hill. Only Johnny, so far, is a little too good, a counsel of perfection, which one receives with more appreciation than true liking.