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cause they think its unrestrained increase a source of dire evil in the present, and a frightful menace for the future. In drawing their conclusions, as it seems to me, these modern Malthusians lose sight of some factors quite as important as the one commerce which the founder of their philosophy forgot; and it is to suggest some of these that the present paper is written.

Unluckily the utterances upon this subject are usually incidental to other things, and consequently so indirect that it is somewhat difficult to cite them for purposes of discussion. In a recent magazine-article, however, I find a tolerably direct statement of the modern Malthusian creed, from which I quote the following passage. The italics are my own, and are used merely to indicate the especial points to which the attention of the reader is invited:

To begin at the beginning, it is admitted that the theory of Malthus is abstractly correct; that population must ultimately press closely upon the means of subsistence, if there be nothing to prevent; but so, too, would a good many other dire evils befall us if there were nothing to prevent. The fact is, that the actual increase of population falls far short of the possible increase, and it is probable that this has nearly always been the case. It is true also, as every observer knows, that the natural growth of population in densely-peopled districts is always less rapid than in those in which the land is not fully occupied. In short, experience teaches unmistakably the existence of certain occult but active natural laws which operate to prevent the over-peopling of populous districts. Again, whatever speculations we may indulge in on the subject, it is an undeniable fact that thus far in the world's history production has actually gained upon population. A careful study of the history of famines shows that we have grown away from the danger of starvation rather than toward it; that the supply of available food at the world's command is relatively greater now than at any earlier period. (See Greg's "Enigmas of Life.")

"The panaceas that various enthusiasts offer us liberty, universal suffrage, free schools, free churches, the rights of labor, the religion of humanity-these things cannot vanquish hunger and disease, nor the vice and ignorance that must always accompany them. How blankly the men of action overlook their main cause—namely, the overcrowding of almost all communities, whether densely or thinly peopled, the presence of too many All these things have been urged by pomouths for the food! The pressure of popula- litical economists in answer to Malthus, and tion upon the means of subsistence is also its they should serve, certainly, to quiet all appressure upon the means of health, intelli- | prehensions of immediate danger from overgence, and decency; and yet the last word of most of our social reformers is, 'Increase and multiply.' In the Apocrypha is a passage much more to the purpose-a passage which might have given us a better world than the present, had it held its place as scripture: Though they multiply, rejoice not in them; . . . trust not them in their life, neither respect their multitude, for one that is just is better than a thousand. . . . By one that hath understanding shall the city be replenished.' . . . Is not this the key of the whole question of reform-how to improve the quality and how to limit the number of the human beings that are born into each civilized community?"

Now, all this would seem to mean that, to improve the quality of the people born into the world, we must in some way limit their number; that the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence is in itself an evil to be avoided by wise statesmanship or wise philosophy in the interest of the human race; that, if we have not fallen upon the evil times foreseen of Malthus, we are approaching them, and meantime are suffering most of our ills in consequence of present over-population. The plausibility of the theory is apparent, but the view taken seems to me a very superficial one, in which some important matters are wholly overlooked.

That the world is crowded may be admitted, and it may not follow that it is overcrowded, or that the crowding is an evil. On the contrary, I think it may be shown that the pressure camplained of is a source of good-not unmixed, of course, but good, nevertheless, and that the good greatly outweighs the evil.

"Zealot and Student," by Titus Munson Coan, in the Galaxy for August, 1875.

population; but the main point made by
modern Malthusians is not so much that we
are in danger of general pauperism as that
the actual, present pressure of population
upon the means of subsistence is a deplorable
evil and the prime cause of nearly all our
ills; and that to reform the world and im-
prove the race we must impose some checks
other than those provided by Nature and cir-
cumstances upon the multiplication of men.
And, while at the first glance there appears
to be some reason to think views of this kind
sound, their correctness, I am persuaded, may
be successfully questioned.

Mr. Walter Bagehot, in an invaluable work,*
devotes an entire chapter to a discussion of
"the uses of conflict" in the development
of nations, and we may properly borrow his
phrase here, urging the manifest uses of con-
flict in the development and improvement of
mankind, as one reason, at least, for thinking
the crowded state of the world not altogether
an evil. It is said that the banana is the
curse of the tropics, for the reason that it af
fords food almost without labor, and, whether
or not the love of ease, the tendency to idle-
ness, be an inborn and universal human trait,
it is certainly a common one enough to justify
the assertion that, without necessity, a large
part of the human race would do no work at
all. It is only the necessity of working in
order to get food which makes men industri-
ous, active, busy beings; and it is only the
crowding complained of by our Malthusians
which imposes this necessity upon mankind.

*"Physics and Politics; or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of Natural Selection' and 'Inheritance' to Political Society. By Walter Bagehot, Esq., Author of "The English Constitution." New York: D. Appleton & Co., Publishers.

The lazy half-breed of the tropics, as he lies in the shade of his banana-plant, dreams doubtless of a better state, in which many of his cravings now unsatisfied might be filled, but he makes no effort for the attainment of such a state, so long as the plantain which shades him furnishes him also with food enough. Can there be doubt that he would lead a more active, a more useful, a better life if the food were less abundantly supplied or more difficult to get? The North American Indian had no tree or bush from which to pluck unearned food; he could not lie idle all day without lying empty as well. But he found in the spoil of forest, and lake, and river, a sufficient means of subsistence, and, availing himself of food so easily secured, he made no effort to improve his condition. There was for him no pressure of population upon the means of subsistence, and, while his life was, perforce, more active than it would have been if he might have found a food-supply on every bush and tree, his activity was strictly bounded by the necessity imposed upon him. He hunted because he must, but did no other work, because no other was necessary to the maintenance of life. And this would seem to be the case always. Throughout the history of the human race, if we make due allowance for inherited habit here and there, we shall find the rule a general one that men work only of necessity, and that their necessities constitute always a pretty accurate measure of their industry.

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Now, work is the universal condition of improvement and progress. It is only in earnest work that men develop their best qualities of mind and body. Intelligence, quickness of perception, intellectual activity, shrewdness, determination, "grit"-all these greatly aid their possessor in an active and necessary struggle for the means of subsistence, and so the necessity of active struggling imposed upon men by the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence tends directly and inevitably to develop them. And of more strictly moral qualities the same thing is equally true. Honesty is the best policy," and men learn to be honest, or, rather, they learn the moral quality of honesty from its usefulness in the struggle. Patience, temperance, cleanliness-all the virtues, in short-are found to aid very actively in the sharp conflict which the pressure of population imposes upon most men; and so we say the conflict is good for man, and the pressure bewailed by the Malthusians is the great motive power of all progress and all improvement. Not only is it not true that we must limit the increase of population by artificial means for the sake of improving the quality of the race, but, on the contrary, the highest improvement in quality can come only through the very crowding which, we are told, stands in its way. Work, attrition, conflict, these are brought about only by the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence, and these are the essential conditions of improvement. It is safe to say that no idle, indolent race-no race whose energies have not been sharply taxed in a struggle of one kind or other-ever yet made an advance worth recording, in physique, intellect, or morals. Indeed, we may go further

and say, without fear of contradiction, that to the improvement of species already existno race has ever made satisfactory progressing, is true. We see around us every day during a prolonged period of repose from its the effects of the struggle for existence, and life-struggle. All history shows us decay we know that in the end the fittest survive, under the gilding of luxurious idleness, when- while the unfit fall silently out of the ranks. ever any nation, having won wealth or great- In view of this fact, are not they who urge ness of any sort, has rested for a time con- the limiting of population as the shortest cut tent. In a fierce struggle for existence, and to race-improvement shutting their eyes to in that only, men train their faculties to the the fundamental truth of modern science? highest activity of which they are capable, developing much strength that was latent, and creating much which, but for the necessity of its use, would have remained forever non-existent.

This is the lesson history everywhere teaches; but we need not go to history to learn it. Every-day life exemplifies the truth in question in a thousand ways. The ablest lawyers are not found in country villages; our most eminent physicians are bred in cities; great bankers and financiers do not grow in the rural districts, but in Wall or Lombard Street. In the great cities all these men must struggle hard to maintain themselves, and desperately to achieve eminence; and in the struggle they develop qualities which could never otherwise have been theirs. And what is true of them is true, in varying degree, of all of us. Each of us owes much to the sharp elbowing he has encountered on life's roadway. Our faculties are sharpened, and our whole being strengthened, by conflict and struggle. "Necessity is the mother of invention," says one proverb, and another adage teaches that competition is the soul of trade. What are these but homely phrasings of the teachings of daily experience in this matter?

Nothing could be easier than to illustrate this point in a hundred ways by facts cited from history and universal experience, if such illustration were in any way necessary. It seems enough, however, to state so patent a fact that, so far from interfering with the progress of human development, the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence not only actively aids, but is itself at once the prime cause and chief agent in all that we rightly call progress.

But this is by no means all, if, indeed, it be half. The positive and visible effects of the struggle imposed upon man by the tendency of his fellows to crowd him constitute, in truth, only the smaller part of the good derived from the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence. The world is pretty full, at least in its older parts, but it is filled chiefly with inferior people. That is to say, the race, as it exists to-day, is not the race it ought to be and might be. It has improved greatly in the past, and is improving still, but it is certainly not yet in a condition of ideal excellence, and it would seem to need for its satisfactory advancement some more potent agency even than the direct influences to which reference has been made. To my thought we have this needed agent of raceimprovement in the operation of the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence in the way of development by natural selection. Whatever differences of opinion there may be regarding the origin of species and the descent of man, no thinking person now doubts that the Darwinian theory, as applied

The crowding of which they complain would seem to be the essential condition of improvement by selection. But for the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence, there would be no struggle for existence, and hence no measuring of strength between the fit and the unfit, and no process of selection and elimination. A rude husbandry answers the ends of the frontiersman, and so, as a rule, the frontiersman contents himself with a scratching of the ground, which he calls agriculture. But, when population grows dense about him, and land costly, he is forced to choose between improvement and failure; and, if there be no new frontier to which he may emigrate, he must either become a better tiller of the ground or suffer starvation; he must fit himself for the struggle or fail in it. And so it is in all things. A less crowded world must of necessity be a less intelligent, a less thrifty, a less worthy world. The crowding alone puts a premium upon intelligence, and thrift, and sobriety, and honesty, and all those virtues which help to make the human race wiser and better. Even culture, the refined and refining cultivation of intellect and soul, the value of which is commonly thought to be other than a pecuniary one, needs a crowded world for its development. What artist, what poet, what idealist of any sort, could find either support for his body or the appreciation which is his soul's necessary food, among the rude folk of an uncrowded world? Until men's intellects are sharpened by struggle, until the processes of selection and inheritance have converted the rude into a refined race, there is no place for the man of culture among them. He has only pearls to give, and they are swine.

May we not safely trust Nature here as everywhere, and refrain from ignorant intermeddling with her work? Free schools, free churches, free libraries, and the like, these, I grant, are not able to "vanquish hunger and disease," or "the vice and ignorance that must always accompany them." But are untilled acres likely to be more efficacious? Will the tramp cease to beg and plunder when a limitation of population shall have made bread-winning easier to the industrious? Free schools feed nobody; free libraries are powerless to appease hunger. But free schools and free libraries and all the other good gifts of civilization so contemptuously dismissed by the Malthusian magazinist do help worthy men and women to develop their own faculties and to become fitter than they were for the struggle in which bread is

won.

Let us see how the case stands. On the one hand, the Malthusian philosopher finds by a process of a priori reasoning that population must naturally increase more rapidly than production, and he cries out: "Check

| population by statutory enactment. Impose restrictions upon marriage. Do this, or accept universal pauperism as the necessary and speedy consequence." Going further, he finds that already population seems to press hardly upon the means of subsistence. He finds, too, that the race, as it exists today, greatly needs improvement in qualityand, jumping at a conclusion, tells us that the world is already over-peopled; that crime, and vice, and ignorance, and disease, and dirt, are the actual and present results of overpopulation; and that to be rid of them we must limit the number and improve the qual ity of the people born into the world.

All this seems very alarming at first, but, upon examining the facts a little more closely, we find here, as everywhere, that Nature has made no mistake. The calculation with which Malthus sat out was correct enough, except that it represented not facts, but apparent possibilities. The possible number of children in a family is more than twenty; the actual number, upon an average, is about one-fourth that. The increase of population, at its seemingly possible rate, would long ago have filled the world to overflowing; the actual increase has done nothing of the kind, and, instead of general pauperism, we have to-day a relatively greater food-supply than ever before. Moreover, we find by experience that Nature has herself set a brake upon the increase of numbers, which promises to be sufficient for all needs. We see that for some unexplained reason the average number of children per family is smaller as a rule in densely than in thinly peopled districts; that as the room for more men and women grows smaller, fewer men and women are born into the world. Against the danger feared by Malthus, Nature seems already to have provided sufficiently, without asking the assistance of our modern legislatures.

As to the evils pointed out by later philosophers of this school, it would seem that they are mistakenly attributed to over-population. That the world is crowded, is true enough, but, as we have already seen, the crowding is a source of good rather than of ill, and the very condition of things which the Malthusians of the magazines would do away with, for the sake of improving the race, is the condition precedent to improvement.

The structure they would hew down as an obstruction is in fact the ladder by which alone we may climb to a higher and better state.

The crowding they lament forces us to struggle, and the struggling is good for us and for our posterity. The pressure of population upon the means of subsistence compels us to win, by intelligence and activity, the food that might otherwise drop into our mouths, and so it serves to make active, earnest men of us. Better still, it gives full play to the process of selection, setting a premium upon every good quality of mind or body, and perpetuating it by inheritance; winnowing the race, and improving it from year to year by casting out the unworthy and raising the worthy to prosperity and power.

True, the Malthusian cannot always measure the improvement with his foot-rule. He

finds ignorance and vice, crime, dirt, and misery, to-day as yesterday, and asks where the improvement is, forgetting, or not choosing to remember, that development is a slow process-as all Nature's processes are-and that race advancement is not always mensurable. Without doubt, mankind has advanced and improved since mediæval times, when war was thought to be the only business worthy a gentleman; when superstition darkened the brightest intellects; when London was without a sewer or a street-cleaning fund; when footpads infested the highways to the metropolis; when the plague depopulated cities without suggesting cleanliness as a prophylactic; in short, when ignorance and vice, and dirt and disease, were the part of the higher as they are now the inheritance of only the lower classes of society. Our present time is a better one than that, and who shall say precisely when it became better? Who shall draw the line between that time and this, and tell us where the one left off and the other began?

Progress has been slow, perhaps, but in the main it has been constant, and so it must be hereafter. We may not be able to show wherein to-day is better than yesterday, or to lay finger upon a definite advance achieved during the current month or year; but if, as I have suggested rather than shown, there be natural laws in constant operation to produce improvement in the race; if, as I hold, the crowding, which our Malthusian magazinists complain of as overcrowding, be only the necessary condition of a wholesome struggle for existence, in which the fittest is to survive and perpetuate itself, and in which every good quality and every valuable attainment is found to aid its possessor in the struggle for existence, while every vice impedes and hampers him; if these be the facts in the case, we know certainly that progress is constantly making, even though we discover it not, and that the race is steadily improving now as it has done hitherto.

That vice and disease and dirt and crime exist among us to an alarming extent, we know perfectly; that no patent device for their cure or suppression exists either in free schools, universal suffrage, or in any other thing whatever, must be admitted; that they are sometimes increased by the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence, I do not doubt; but that their cure lies in removing the pressure, I stoutly deny. While here and there one man or woman is made vicious by want, the great mass of mankind is made more industrious, sober, thrifty, and intelligent, by the crowding which produces individual distress, and on the whole, as I say, this good outweighs that ill.

We shall probably never be rid of crime or misery while the world lasts, and we may as well look this probability in the face. The question for us is, how to reduce the misery and the crime to a minimum, and how to secure the constant improvement of men in general. If, as I suppose, the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence is the chief agent for the accomplishment of this, we shall blunder outrageously when we destroy its constant efficiency for good because of its occasional capacity to work ill.

Railroads kill people sometimes; schools tempt frail youth to over-study; even churches tumble about the heads of worshipers now and then; but shall we condemn railways and

schools and churches because of the ill they IN

do upon occasion, or shall we rather cherish them because of the greater good they work, guarding as well as we may against the possible evil? This is the logic of all life, and it should restrain us from ignorant and mischievous intermeddling, by statutory enactment or otherwise, with processes of Nature which at best we can only imperfectly understand. Let us, by all means, do what we can to alleviate suffering, prevent and cure disease, wean away from vice and stamp out crime; but let us not destroy the agency which is lifting the great mass of men to a higher level, merely because its operations sometimes produce a contrary effect upon single individuals.

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON.

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EDITOR'S TABLE.

"N view of what we said last week in regard to governments and the limitation of their functions, it may interest the reader to glance for a few moments at some of the things that achieve great success without the aid of the state. We have several times, in discussing this subject, referred to the voluntary church system of America, but have overlooked an equally favorable example in our Sunday-schools. We have no statistics at hand of the attendance at these schools, but everybody knows what an immense social force they have become. Every church has a school attached to it, and in every community there is a large body of men and women zealously laboring through these instrumentalities for the religious culture of children. Missionaries go out into the streets and lanes with the hope of persuading stray waifs into the folds; and our most eloquent and learned clergymen look upon the Sunday-school as worthy of their best skill and effort in the promotion of the end to which their lives are dedicated. A great literature has grown up in connection with Sunday - schools. Many journals are published in their interest, and the books published for the libraries attached to them are legion. No state church in the world even approaches in this particular to the free church of America. Assuredly, if voluntary effort can do so much for religious education, it is entirely equal to the requirements of scientific education.

Much younger in their organization, but scarcely less prosperous, or extensive in their influence, are the Young Men's Christian Associations. In these institutions we see bodies of young men drawn together by no other design than the furtherance of the cause of religion, who have erected all over the country spacious structures, formed libraries and reading-rooms, organized systems of lectures, extended help and instruction to the needy and the ignorant, and set before all the world examples of Christian zeal. And all that they have done has been accomplished wholly by voluntary energy and by voluntary subscriptions. The state has never been called upon to aid the great purpose of these young men, and the state has never interposed to mar or obstruct it. Similar faith and zeal in behalf of other great interests for science, for the arts, for literature-would meet with no less success.

The Masons and the Odd-Fellows afford two other instances of the immense results of well-directed voluntary effort. In these institutions there is not only benevolence of purpose, but an authority which is as stringent as that of the state, and as successfully enforced. We are not now discussing the

wisdom or the necessity of secret organizations like these; we are only pointing out how completely they show the sufficiency of voluntary organization and effort.

People usually take a great deal of pride in national geographical and exploring expeditions. England bas only recently sent a well-equipped expedition to the arctic seas, and is maintaining an exploring-party in Palestine. Now, however much enterprises of this character may seem to confer glory upon a nation, they are really quite beyond the province of the state. The idea that government should undertake projects of this kind has undoubtedly its origin in precedents of earlier periods, when despotic rulers sent forth fleets to conquer and despoil the savage places and weaker kingdoms of the earth. To subdue the rest of the world was supposed then to be one of the cardinal duties of the state. While expeditions to overrun and subdue remote and defenseless places are now out of date, the public feeling is still leavened with the old pride and ambition. It is believed that there may be explorations and discoveries in the interest of trade; the manufacturer and merchant thirst for conquest as the knights and warriors did of old. But at the very moment that the English Government is sending forth its ships to the North, an admirably-appointed expedition, supported entirely by private subscription, is struggling amid the wilds of Africa under the command of Mr. Stanley. It will be remembered by our readers that this expedition is organized by the proprie tors of the New York Herald and the London Telegraph. If two newspapers are enabled to send to Africa the best equipped expedition that ever assailed the mysteries and secrets of that land of terrors, assuredly scientific men ought to be able by suitable organizations to accomplish all that the state now undertakes for them. It will be seen, by a reference to our science-department this week, that the English men of science are greatly discontented with what government has done for them; with the greed and perversity that marks all classes who have taught themselves to look to the state for subsidies and aid, they clamor for more, and have formulated their demands. It would be much better for the real advance of science, better for the interests of the people, if Parliament should now promptly reject their proposals, and remand the whole matter to the private enterprise where it belongs.

It should be remembered that voluntary effort is wholly inefficient in those countries where the people have been taught to look up to government for its paternal aid and guidance. It is not merely that the state does badly all things outside of its proper sphere, but it extinguishes self-reliance in the people,

encourages sloth, and chills that enterprising spirit which, wherever it exists, is more than wealth or power. The people that the government lets alone soon learn so well how to accomplish for themselves that they outdo a hundred-fold the nations that wait upon the will and submit to the interference of their rulers.

WE hear of societies formed in some of our cities designed to encourage among young women the practice of studying at home. It is not to be inferred that young men are not in as much need of home-study as their sisters are, but so far the societies organized for this purpose have been founded by women for the advantage of women. The theory that prompts the movement is, that girls, after leaving school, are too apt to neglect their books, and to lose their interest in those intellectual pursuits which education is mainly designed to promote. It is believed that with many young women the ordinary incentives for the pursuance of study after the close of her school-days are insufficient; there is needed, it is thought, the stimulation of companionship, the zest of appreciation and kindly encouragement, the guidance of experienced and mature minds. For these reasons societies with this purpose in view have been founded in London and Boston. Of the operations of a Boston society, that has been in existence nearly two years, we learn a few particulars from a contemporary, as follows:

"Its purpose is the very simple and direct one of inducing girls to form the habit of devoting some part of every day to study of a systematic and thorough kind; its mode of operation is through the exercise of an oversight by experienced and educated ladies over the home-work of younger ladies, and this, of course, mainly by means of correspondence. For example, if a girl of seventeen or over desires to join the society, she gives her name to the secretary, pays a small initiation fee to receives in return a programme of the several cover expenses of postage, printing, etc., and courses open in history, literature, art, science, German, and French; she selects the department of study which she desires to pursue, and is put in communication with the member of the committee who has charge of the department. She is expected to devote some portion of every day or week to careful reading and study, order and system being substantial elements in the plan, and at least once a month to report progress to her officer, who, in return, gives advice, makes suggesdent. Once a year a meeting is held of such tions, and encourages or stimulates the stuas can come together, and a general report is made, with special essays by students, and diplomas are given."

This is a very simple scheme, and no one can justly object to influences of the character described being brought to bear upon the young women of the country. No publicity is sought; literary vanity and display are not involved in the purpose; and, although the

results may prove slight in any obvious way, literary pleasure and companionship are ends worthy of consideration and respect.

It may be said with some truth that the really studious mind needs no such encour agement. The intellectual activities all around us would, in truth, seem to be enough to stimulate any minds not wholly lethargic; those who are alert, whose intellects are en rapport with all the stirring movements of the day, who follow the discoveries and researches of science, who listen to the speculations of the philosophers, who are moved by the strains of the poets, who are charmed by the achievements of art such assuredly would need repression rather than the stimu lation of "Societies for the Encouragement of Studies at Home." However, there are many kinds of people in the world. If there be those who are unstirred by the electricities of the hour, let them by all means whip up their sluggish spirits in the way proposed. It is probable that some natures can never do without masters-study must be a duty and a task; and there must wait upon its performance the award or the censure of a superior, or else the heart loses courage, and the will falls away into torpid sleep.

WE append hereto a letter from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, the venerable and muchesteemed literary editor of the Philadelphia Press, also well known as the editor of the American edition of "Noctes Ambrosianæ," and as the delightful repository of innumer able reminiscences and anecdotes of by-gone celebrities in English literature and art. Let us take this occasion to say that Dr. Mackenzie should by all means give his memoirs to the world; those who have met the "old man eloquent" know how replete they are with rich memorabilia. The letter is as follows. Its contents will doubtless surprise many readers:

·

"SIR: In APPLETONS' JOURNAL of the 2d of this month, I find in the 'London Letter' the following short paragraph: What is said to be a hitherto unpublished sermon by Father Prout has just been printed in a Cork paper. How characteristic it is! Having chosen for his text, "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord," he goes on to show that the real poor are "the clargy," and this is how the great humorist winds up.' Then follows an extract containing the conclusion of the sermon.

"I have to say that 'Father Prout's Sermon,' from which that extract was made, did not emanate from the subtile and racy mind of the author of the far-famed 'Reliques of Father Prout,' originally published in Fraser's Magazine, and subsequently in two 16mo volumes in 1836, but was written by myself forty years ago, as an exaggerated but not uncourteous imitation of the familiar style of the real Father Prout, P. P., of Watergrasshill, nine miles north of Cork. It was partly' four ded on fact,' the main idea and some of the poi its being supplied by my personal recollection of a ser

mon which I heard the reverend gentleman | London, and in a warehouse constantly vispreach, when, a school-boy, I lived in his neighborhood.

"I published the 'Sermon' in one of the English periodicals of the time. In 1850, making a collection of my magazine articles (in three volumes, entitled 'Mornings at Matlock,' and published by H. Colburn, London),

I included the 'Sermon.' In 1854 I again put it into one of my books (' Bits of Blarney,' published by Redfield, New York), and it occupies seven pages (283-290) in the volume in question.

"The Rev. Francis Mahony, the veritable author of the 'Prout Papers,' was pleased, more than once, to compliment me on the 'Sermon' in question. I desire to claim it as my own original composition, and shall communicate this claim to the press of Cork, my own early home. Yours truly,

"R. SHELTON MACKENZIE. “PHILADELPHIA, October 9, 1875."

THE savage and atrocious murder of poor, little Josie Langmaid, in New Hampshire, has made every one shudder, not alone at the barbarous cruelty of the crime, but also at the apparent immunity with which it was committed. It adds one more to a long list of unknown murderers, and leaves the public mind in any thing but a state of security or confidence in the existing system of detection. The old maxim that "murder will out" is beginning to have too many exceptions, it would seem, to prove the rule. The murders of Mr. Nathan, of the Joyce children, of Kate Leehan, and Bridget Landregan, of Abijah Ellis, and numerous others, come to mind to recall to us how many assassins still walk abroad free in the light of day, unsuspected, or, at least, unconvicted. In our indignant haste however, we are too prone to overlook the fact that these cases are really exceptional, though alarmingly numerous. Taking all the homicides which occur, only a very small proportion of the perpetrators escape justice altogether. It is perhaps better that they should elude the law entirely than that, being taken, they should, owing to the devices of counsel, and undue influences which are sometimes found to environ courts of justice, be taken only to receive a punishment conspicuously inadequate to the enormity of their crime. Nor need we indulge in self-depreciatory vaporings to the effect that we are a more lawless and less protected community than others. At the moment, indeed, that we have been thrilled by the Pembroke tragedy, London has been shocked by the accidental discovery of a most foul murder which, having been committed a year ago, has only just now come to light. The foolish fears of the alleged assassin lest an examination, for another purpose, of the house where his victim lay buried, should reveal his guilt, caused him to do an act which, at this late day, exposed it. Harriet Lane was undoubtedly done to death in September of last year, in the most crowded district of

ance was

ited by all sorts of people; her disappearremarked by her family and friends; she was known to be intimate with the man Wainright, and to have been annoying him with her jealousy, and importuYet the London police,

nities for money. which is reformed every year or two, and is maintained at a very heavy expense to ratepayers, do not seem to have stumbled anywhere near to a clew of the dark deed. The fate of Harriet Lane, too, is no more an isolated case than is that of Josie Langmaid. For years London has been the scene of murders quite equal to either in atrocity, and, it may be added, in mystery. The tragedies of the New Road and Great Coram Street, and of the two young girls who were found in the Regent's Canal within a few months of each other, and whose very names could not be discovered, not to speak of the people taken, at frequent intervals, out of the Thames, show that the English have even more cause than we to complain of the insecurity of life, and the inefficiency of the police.

IN striking contrast to the tumultuous rhetoric of Mr. Charles Reade's letters on copyright is the dispassionate, convincing, and judicial paper, by Mr. E. S. Drone, on this subject, in the American Law Review for October. Mr. Drone's paper is an examination into the origin and nature of literary property, connected with an inquiry as to whether the right in this kind of property is perpetual. His article covers this ground very thoroughly, and seems to us fairly conclusive in its arguments. It shows historically that literary property at one time enjoyed in England the protection of the common law of property; and it demonstrates how, according to the fundamental principles of legal equity, it is entitled to this protection. The right of property in a manuscript is always conceded; but it is claimed, and has so been decided by the English courts, that a publication of a manuscript destroys this right. Mr. Drone contests this closely, showing that the loss of the right could only occur by abandonment or by contract-that abandonment must be proved by intention, and that it is evident on the face that the sale of a book is a contract to part with the corporeal and not the incorporeal element of the work. We recently advanced in the JOURNAL a similar argument to the latter, showing that by the very nature of the purchase a book-buyer could not obtain more than that which the purchase-money involved would in equity cover. The use of the intellectual contents of the book is sold, and not the right to multiply the same. As to whether the right in literary property may be destroyed by the legislature, Mr. Drone shows that the

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state is empowered to appropriate private property when the public necessity requires it, and then only upon due compensation. The limitation of copyright is the destruction of the property-value of a book after a certain period, and hence, according to the argument of Mr. Drone, is a violation of a fundamental principle of law. We have not the space to follow Mr. Drone through all his arguments; we can only say that he seems to us to have completely established his propositions.

DISARMAMENT seems to have become a problem for speculative statesmen and eloquently-unpractical peace congresses to exercise the ingenuity of their faculties upon. England just now proclaims to the world that she has produced the most monstrous gun yet. The Fraser cannon, we are told, has a weight of eighty-one tons, and has already been tested with a charge of two hundred and forty pounds. More than this, the inventive and destructive Fraser hastens to demonstrate that it is perfectly easy to make guns of double the size and power of this enormous engine-guns which will "throw a ton of metal at every shot." Perhaps in the next war we shall hear of whole towns being blown to atoms at a single burst of the bellowing brass. Of course Germany, and France, and Russia, will hasten to cultivate Mr. Fraser's acquaintance, and to avail themselves of his colossal constructive powers. It is a very serious commentary on the present state and temper of Europe that he who can invent a new implement of war has the best chance of wealth and fame. When, as it is said, even civilized and commercial England is exultingly testing an engine, a single charge of which consists of a bag of powder with grains an inch and a half square, the bulk being as large as a good-sized pig, it is much to be feared that the era of peace is afar off.

IN September of every year a grotesque scene may be witnessed in the "Halles Centrales," or great markets of Paris. A monster pumpkin, decorated with a crown of pasteboard and tinsel, and borne upon a board which serves for a throne, is carried in state through the airy corridors and along the wide outer pavements. The marketpeople gather around, and pay obeisance to the royal vegetable, and afterward King Pumpkin is mercilessly dissected, sold in slices at auction, and made into succulent soup which is eaten amid much Gallic merriment and persiflage. Do the Paris marketpeople merely mean this as a funny festival, or are they consciously ironical in this crowning the dullest and thickest-pated of the vegetable kingdom? A rude epithet

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