"One fact is sufficient to show the great progress due to this State legislation in an ever-increasing population, crime is rapidly and greatly diminishing" (p. 496).

Now, without dwelling on the fact, shown in Mr. Pike's "History of Crime in England," that "violence and lawlessness" had increased during the war period which ended at Waterloo; and without dwelling on the fact that, after the recovery from prostration produced by war, there was a diminution of crime along with that great diminution of coercive legislation which characterized the long period of peace; I go on to remark that a primary condition to the correct drawing of inferences is-other things equal. Does M. de Laveleye really think, when comparing the state of the last generation with that of the present, that other things are so equal that to the growth of State-administrations can be ascribed the decrease of crime? He ignores those two factors, far more important than all others, which have produced a social revolution-railways and free-trade: the last resulting from the abolition of governmental restraints after a long struggle, and the first effected by private enterprise carried out in spite of strenuous opposition for some time made in the Legislature. Beyond all question, the prosperity due to these factors has greatly ameliorated the condition of the working-classes, and by so doing has diminished crime; for undoubtedly, diminishing the difficulties of getting food, diminishes one of the temptations to crime. If M. de Laveleye refers to a more recent diminution, then, unless he denies the alleged relation between drunkenness and crime, he must admit that the temperance agitation, with its pledges, its "Bands of Hope," and its "Blue Ribbon League," has had a good deal to do with it.

Before passing to the chief question let me correct M. de Laveleye on some minor points. He says

"I think that the great fundamental error of Mr. Herbert Spencer's system, which is so generally accepted at the present day, consists in the belief that if State power were but sufficiently reduced," &c.

Now I set against this a sentence not long since published by Mr. Frederic Harrison:

....

"Mr. Spencer has himself just published. . . . 'The Man versus The State,' to which he hardly expects to make a convert except here and there, and about which an unfriendly critic might say that it might be entitled Mr. Spencer against all England." (Nineteenth Century, vol. xvi. p. 366.) The fear lest my arguments should prevail, which I presume prompted M. de Laveleye's article, is evidently ill-founded. I wish I saw reason to believe that his estimate is nearer to the truth than

the opposite one.

On p. 490, M. de Laveleye writes

"The law that Mr. Herbert Spencer desires society to adopt is simply Darwin's law-'the survival of the fittest.""

Perhaps I may be excused for wishing here to prevent further confirmation of a current error. In his article, M. de Laveleye has quoted from "Social Statics " passages showing insistance on the benefits resulting from survival of the fittest among mankind, as well as among animals; though he ignores the fact that the work as a whole is an elaborate statement of the conditions under which, and limits within which, the natural process of elimination of the unfit should be allowed to operate. Here my immediate purpose is to correct the impression which his statement, as above worded, produces, by naming the dates: "Social Statics" was published in 1851; Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" in 1859.

And now I pass to the main issue. In pursuance of his statement that I wish society to adopt the survival of the fittest as its guiding principle, M. de Laveleye goes on to describe what would be its action as applied to mankind. Here are his words.

"This is the ideal order of things which, we are told, ought to prevail in human societies, but everything in our present organization (which economists, and even Mr. Spencer himself, admit, however, to be natural) is wholly opposed to any such conditions. An old and sickly lion captured a gazelle; his younger and stronger brother arrives, snatches away his prize, and lives to perpetuate the species; the old one dies in the struggle, or is starved to death. Such is the beneficent law of the 'survival of the fittest.' It was thus among barbarian tribes. But could such a law exist in our present social order? Certainly not! The rich man, feebly constituted and sickly, protected by the law, enjoys his wealth, marries and has offspring, and if an Apollo of herculean strength attempted to take from him his possessions, or his wife, he would be thrown into prison, and were he to attempt to practise the Darwinian law of selection, he would certainly run a fair risk of the gallows" (p. 492).

Now though, on the next page, M. de Laveleye recognizes the fact that the survival of the fittest, as I construe it in its social applications, is the survival of the industrially superior and those who are fittest for the requirements of social life, yet, in the paragraph I have quoted, he implies that the view I hold would countenance violent methods of replacing the inferior by the superior. Unless he desires to suggest that I wish to see the principle operate among men as it operates among brutes, why did he write this paragraph? In the work before him, without referring to other works, he has abundant proof that, above all things, aggression of every kind is hateful to me; and he scarcely needs telling that from my earliest book, written more than a third of a century ago, down to the present time, I have urged the change of all laws which either inflict injustice or fail to remedy injustice, whether committed by one individual against another, or by class against class, or by people against people. Why, then, did M. de Laveleye make it seem that I would, if I could, establish a reign of injustice under its most brutal form? If there needs proof

that in my view the struggle for existence as carried on in society, and the greater multiplication of those best fitted for the struggle, must be subject to rigorous limitations, I may quote as sufficient proof a passage from the "Data of Ethics: " premising that the word cooperation used in it, must be understood in its widest sense, as comprehending all those combined activities by which citizens carry on social life.

"The leading traits of a code under which complete living through voluntary co-operation [here antithetically opposed to compulsory co-operation, characterizing the militant type of society] is secured, may be simply stated. The fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each shall severally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage naturally achieved by them; and this implies, firstly, that he shall suffer no direct aggressions on his person or property, and, secondly, that he shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach of contract. Observance of these negative conditions to voluntary co-operation having facilitated life to the greatest extent by exchange of services under agreement, life is to be further facilitated by exchange of services beyond agreement: the highest life being reached only when, besides helping to complete one another's lives by specified reciprocities of aid, men otherwise help to complete one another's lives" (p. 149).

This passage, indeed, raises in a convenient form the essential question. It will be observed that in it are specified two sets of conditions, by conforming to which men living together may achieve the greatest happiness. The first set of conditions is that which we comprehend under the general name justice; the second set of conditions is that which we comprehend under the general name generosity. The position of M. de Laveleye, and of the multitudes who think with him, is that the community, through its government, may rightly undertake both to administer justice and to practise generosity. On the other hand, I, and the few who think with me, contend that justice alone is to be administered by the community in its corporate capacity; and that the practice of generosity is to be left to private individuals, and voluntarily-formed combinations of individuals. Insuring each citizen's safety in person and property, as well as insuring him such returns for his services as his fellow-citizens agree to give, is a public affair; while affording him help, and giving him benefits beyond those he has earned, is a private affair. The reason for maintaining this distinction is that the last duty cannot be undertaken by the State without breach of the first. The vital requirement to social life must be broken that a non-vital requirement may be fulfilled. Under a reign of absolute justice unqualified by generosity, a social life may be carried on, though not the highest social life; but a reign of generosity without any justice-a system under which those who work are not paid, so that those who have been idle or drunken may be saved from misery-is fatal; and any approach to it is injurious. That

only can be a wholesome state in which conduct brings its natural results, good or evil, as the case may be; and it is the business of Government, acting on behalf of all, to see that each citizen shall not be defrauded of the good results, and that he shall not shoulder off the evil results on to others. If others, in their private capacities, are prompted by affection or pity to mitigate the evil results, by all means let them do so: no power can equitably prevent them from making efforts, or giving money, to diminish the sufferings of the unfortunate and the inferior; at the same time that no power can equitably coerce them into doing this.

If M. de Laveleye holds, as he appears to do, that enforcing the normal relations between conduct and consequences, right as it may be in the abstract, is impracticable under existing social conditions, which are in many cases such that men get what they have neither earned nor otherwise equitably received, and in many cases such that they are prevented from earning anything; then my reply is, by all means, where this condition of things is due to unjust arrangements, let us rectify these arrangements as fast as we can. But let us not adopt the disastrous policy of establishing new injustices for the purpose of mitigating the mischiefs produced by old injustices.

HERBERT SPENCER.

SHAKSPEARE'S PORTRAITURE OF

WOMEN.

FOR

NOR a critic to say anything of Shakspeare that has not been said already is as hard as it would be for a poet to sing a new song about the sun. But we vivify our old impressions by rearranging them; each reflects the light, flinging a gleam or a sparkle on its neighbour, and when we alter the position of this or that, nothing seems to remain quite the same; we have given our kaleidoscope a turn. On this account, if on no other, we may value the chronological method of studying an author's works of late pursued so industriously; it has been a new way of arranging our knowledge, and so it has reanimated our dulled impressions. Let us see whether we can feel the old immortal beauty in some degree afresh, and cheat ourselves into supposing that we are making some small discoveries about Shakspeare, and the growth of his character and genius, by glancing along his portraitures of women in the order in which they were actually conceived by him. We shall at least spend an hour in the best possible company. These ideal figures cannot fail to quicken our sensibility for what is beautiful in real life; there are hidden or marred ideals all around us in the actual men and women, in the commonplace lives of the street, the market and the fireside. If we knew every motion of an Imogen or a Cordelia, it might be possible to detect the heart of one of these beating under a modern gown.

But why not go to a woman to hear about women? Why expect to learn as much from Shakspeare as from George Eliot or Jane Austen? It is true that there were secrets known to Jane Austen and George Eliot at which even Shakspeare only guessed; secrets of womanly fortitude in petty things, which are properly known only to those who feel where the shoe pinches; secrets of feminine weakness