SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
Prisons, Police, and Punishment. By Edward Carpenter. (Arthur C. Fifield. 2s. net.)—Mr. Carpenter has, it would seem, no little sympathy with the famous aphorism, La propriete c'est le vol. He draws, for example, a harrowing picture of some simple creature who builds a cottage on a bit of waste land and is dis- possessed of it by a cruel tyrant who calls himself lord of the manor. Now what is the real truth ? The bit of land is common, —i.e., the property of the lord of the manor, subject to the legal rights of a certain number of commoners, which rights are often as valuable as those of the lord. These rights over it are equally those of pasturage. Suppose that fifty simple creatures build houses—and if the common were handy to a town they certainly would—what becomes of the pasture? Mr. Carpenter has, we doubt not, good aims, but he seems to us very ignorant of things that do not fit in with his theories, and culpably violent in his language.
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