forgotten why over-population is an evil. It is an evil because it means wages wretchedly low, protracted labour supplying only a bare pittance, industrious men and women half starved and ill clad, children pining and dying from foul air in crowded rooms and from scanty covering through the winter's nights. Are, then, these evils of over-population a reason why we should strive to avoid over-popula. tion by anticipating the evils? We are placing ourselves in the position of the miser who will rather starve than spend his money, lest having spent it he should find himself reduced to starvation. The peril of over-population is not, I be lieve, so certain as many apprehend. Changes are in progress of which the effect is both to augment our supply of food and to draft off to other lands a large portion of the annual increment of population, and although we are constantly advancing towards the frontier where the further increase of our numbers would occasion deep poverty, that frontier itself, as has been well said, is constantly receding before us. The fact that there is a frontier, and a peril when we reach it, is a good reason for adopting no measures that shall recklessly stimulate the natural tendency to increase; it is no reason for forestalling the evil day by a purposed depression of present wages, even if such a depression were, what a very little reflection shows that it is not, the best specific against recklessness.

After all, it may be said, this is still very indefinite. If there be a duty on the employer's part to pay fair wages, to forego the full exercise of the power placed in his hands by the competition of labour when the exercise of it would depress wages to an unfairly or, it may be, a cruelly low standard, how, it will be asked, can any man determine what fair wages are?

The whole question what the rate of wages ought to be in any particular occupation is still left in nubibus: what the market rate is we can ascertain, and if we accept that as the rate which ought to be paid, we have some guide: if we acknowledge a duty to go beyond it where it is insufficient, we are left with no fixed criterion.

I do not deny that this is so. The duty of employers to employed, like the reciprocal duty and indeed like most duties, is an indefinite one. In almost every relation of life, a man who is desirous of pitching his standard of duty as low as possible, will find it but too easy to invent excuses for so doing. But the indefiniteness of the duty is no reason why men should be induced, by a misrepresentation of the character of political economy, to ignore the duty. It is not much more indefinite than the duty of the workman to do good and honest work for his employer. If the employer were justified in paying, or were, as some say, bound to pay, as little wages as he could to his workmen, the workman, I presume, would be equally justified in doing, if not bound to do, as slack, careless, and unsubstantial work as possible for his master, wherever the work so done would not be perilous or injurious to third parties, but would merely result in an inferior article, which might be properly sold at a proportionately inferior price. If the one is to pay good wages only when he cannot help it, the other, one might suppose (subject to the limitation just mentioned), is to do good work only when he cannot help it. Such attempts to dispense with liberality and with honesty whenever practicable are plainly attempts to dispense with them altogether. To pay well because you cannot pay badly-to do honest work because you have no opportunity to cheat-are of course

not liberality nor honesty. Doubtless, it is impossible to lay down a rule; but the conscience of the employer, if not stifled by himself nor soothed to sleep by comfortable doctrines of non-responsibility preached in the name of political economy, will be at least some security against his amassing a huge fortune, and revelling in ease and luxury while those by whose labour his luxury is supported are struggling painfully for scarcely the means to keep life in being. Very many just employers, of course, rise superior to the low notions of duty which are so often preached in their

ears.

They know the absurdity of calling every payment, however hardly earned, that rises above the strict market level, a charity' which degrades the recipient. But it is assuredly a great evil that the voice of conscience should be confronted in this matter by another voice which claims to be the voice of political economy, and that those who would gladly respect both the dictates of humanity and the doctrines of science should be driven to exclaim:

Are God and Science then at strife,
That Science lends such evil dreams?

It is not from political economy that such teachings are in truth derived. That science, as I have attempted to show, has for its purpose, as every other science has, to explain and not to justify-to show how things come to be what they areand not to take the accomplished fact and set it up for reverence,

with the inscription beneath it, 'Whatever is, is right.' The economist is within his sphere when he brings the ascertained truths of his science and contributes them as an element to the discussion of social problems. He transcends his sphere when, with the common fault of specialists, he claims, in virtue of being able to pronounce on his own element of the problem, to be a final authority on the whole. His claim is then as extravagant as that of a military expert who, if he has established the feasibility of a war, and the advantages of the new frontier to be won by it, thinks the rest of the world debarred from discussing its justice. Those who most value political economy within its own province will most regret that it should be discredited by being made responsible for inferences which it nowhere warrants. To the friends of a Cassius it is a painful report, whether it be just or unjust, that reaches them when they hear of the name of Cassius honouring corruption. And to those who value the systematic study of an important branch of human well-being, it is a repulsive spectacle that presents itself when greed and hardhearted

ness

-like the serpents that slunk away from the corpse of Laocoön to find safety in the temple of Minerva -take refuge at the shrine of Political Economy from the detestation which naturally pursues them: Sub pedibusque de clypeique sub orbe G. S.

teguntur.

T

HERE is no reproach against historical writing that an advocate of historical study finds so difficult to deal with as the inconsistency-which indeed too often becomes the contrariety-of its utterances. Writers of equal ability, equal industry, and equal honesty, often give totally different pictures of the same men and same events, the lights and shadows of one eloquent historian's pages become the shadows and lights of another's; the fair and foul of Burton and Froude become the foul and fair of Hosack, the fanatic-hypocrite of Hume becomes the God-intoxicated man of Carlyle-in fact, there is hardly a single personality of the past that does not paint himself in exactly opposite colours on the mental retinas of historians of the same country and same language, hardly a single incident that is not represented or misrepresented, hardly a single movement that is not interpreted or misinterpreted, differently by them. And so long as history continues to be studied and written as it has hitherto generally been in England at least so long this reproach will cling to it, so long we need not hope to see it wiped away. Of course it may be said that writers of history do not stand alone in liability to this imputation, that there are other departments of knowledge, some of them claiming the dignity of sciences, in which quite as little harmony can be established among investigators, and that too when the object of inquiry is something that may be closely scrutinised, even experimented upon, not merely dimly seen across the haze of centuries. So long as men wrangle fiercely about what is going

on before their bodily eyes, it is not so very wonderful that they should wrangle about what went on long before they were born. Yet this is no answer to the charge; every field of intellectual labour must be tried by the fruits it bears; those who work in it, when their attention is drawn to the questionable character of some of its products, cannot be suffered to escape the necessity of explanation by simply pointing to some equally questionable products of other folks' fields. I will begin, then, by admitting that historical writing in this country is fairly reproachable with this defect, and that the defect is a very grave one. Still, I believe not only that there is some remedy for it, but also that one or two are already seeking to this remedy, and with the happiest results.

As to the root, or rather roots, of the mischief, there can be no doubt. Most Englishmen have hitherto come to the study of the records of the past not as single-minded, simple-hearted lovers of history for its own sake alone, but in a mixed character, as lovers of history for its own sake and the sake of some bit of themselves, some preconception, some theory, some modern cause that they long to see triumphant, some powerful feeling that has taken possession of them, some passionately held belief, some personal admiration. Within the last fifty years England has given birth to a rare group of historical intellects, men worthy ofalmost unlimited reverence; but the most uncritical reader of their works will soon discover that hardly one of them is an unwavering, untainted votary of historical truth. All are noble

scholars, insatiable in their thirst, unweariable in their search, after truth; but one is an Englishman first and a scholar afterwards, another a Whig first and a scholar afterwards, another a Protestant first and a scholar afterwards, another a Catholic first and a scholar afterwards, and SO on throughout the chief bulk of the group; in all but one or two there is the personal element in the front, not often perverting the trath certainly, but forcing you to take a dash of something else along with it. Thus there is an abundance of partisan histories, many of them of great, not a few of surpass ing merit; of histories pure and simple, not as many as would exhaust the fingers of one hand. While one historian-to use Mr. Arnold's words—' writes history to extol the Whigs and another to execrate the Church,' while most project into the past the antagonisms of the present, only two living historians of eminence in England, so far as I know, write history because it is history. For Professor Stubbs, though said to be strongly attached to an advanced school of ecclesiastical thought, is a scholar first and an Anglican afterwards, and Professor Gardiner a scholar first and a Liberal afterwards-if, indeed, he belong to any political party whatever. 'The eye,' it was once said, 'can only see that which it brings with it the power of seeing,' and if it be turned on any object, dimmed by the steam of passionate feeling, it has lost the power of seeing that object indeed as it is. However eagerly it may strain its gaze, it can seize but an imperfect, blurred outline, not a faithful reflection of the object. For History, like Art, is a jealous mistress; she insists upon entire devotion; you must love her not at all or all in all; if you allow your wandering fancy to be lured from her ever so little, she avenges herself in exact

proportion to the measure of your offence.

This historical partisanship has been hitherto the special reproach of English literature; in no other country has the historical mind been so 'cabined, cribbed, confined,' so much under the sway of passing influences, so enslaved to present and secondary considerations. Nor have we to go far to find the reason of this; in no other state of modern times have interest in politics and thought upon politics been so widespread and so free to take their own course, for so long a time, as in England. That the English people should be forced to learn their own history from the pages of partisan writers, is a part of the price they have to pay for their free institutions; and if it were the whole price, those free institutions would undoubtedly have come to them cheap. A great authority on such a subject has lately ruled that history is but the politics of the past; and while the parties of the past can be traced in almost unbroken continuity across three centuries of English life, men who think and feel strongly on the great questions of the present, will think and feel strongly on the great questions of the past, will give the lion's share of their sympathy to the men who then upheld the principles they still cherish, will be to the virtues of those men very kind, to their faults more than a little blind; and partisan histories will continue to be written. The fairestminded Nonconformist writer of the present day would be more than mortal if he could see Sheldon and Baxter in exactly the same light; the fairest-minded Anglican writer could hardly trust himself to deal out a proportionate measure of justice to Laud and to Prynne. The kinships of political and religious parties are no less potent for good and evil than the kinships of blood; & vehement admirer of Parliamentary

institutions must, almost in spite of himself, make the history of Eliot and Pym a continuous panegyric; the modern representatives of the old Cavaliers see but few flecks on the character of Charles I.; and the great living apostle of controversial urbanity has lately found a seventeenth-century hero in Lord

Falkland.

Yet the evil is not an unmixed one; it has brought with it one great advantage almost compensating the mischief it has doneit has insured research. It has sent into the field of historical inquiry a number of earnest men, each bent on ransacking some one chosen patch or corner, and safe to treasure up with loving care every scrap of knowledge he can find. There is not a spot in that field that a pair of keen eyes are not sure, some time, to be fastened on, and if what they want be there are certain not to miss it; and after them another pair are sure to succeed, equally certain to find what they want if it be there. Thus writer supplements writer: English historians have been unconsciously working on the principle that Bacon calls a conjunction of labours,' which he says-and the remark has in this application a force that Bacon could hardly have dreamt of supplieth the frailty of man.' In the sum-total of the results of this unassociated toil a mass of materials is heaped up which must prove of inestimable value to the coming historian. Mr. Burton wishes that in every great historical controversy the case of each side should be carefully briefed, just as if it were to be argued before a law court; and then, he thinks, a final decision would be comparatively easy. Now that has been to some extent practically done already; each historian holds his brief, and makes a more or less powerful pleading for his hero, heroine, party, or theory. The pity

of it is, however, that the advocates are of such varying merit; now and then one takes entire possession of the court, which can hardly be got to listen to any other in the same cause. It will be some time, I fancy, before a Tory Macaulay rises to state the case for his friends of William's reign with the force and picturesqueness that have won an easy victory for the Whigs of that time with the generation that is now passing away.

But historical partisanship may be said to have now fulfilled its mission; it is high time that it should give place to a better and nobler literary spirit. The day of the advocates ought surely to be now past, the day of the simple lover of truth to have come. By this time English readers must be thoroughly weary of the Babel created by the discordant, often contradictory, voices that are loudly expounding to them their past history; an ordinary English reader that loves mental peace can have it in this province only by deliberately closing his ears

for metaphorically such a process is possible to every writer who does not belong to his own party or clique; that is, by an act, so far as it goes, of intellectual suicide. It is only very daring spirits that can safely plunge into this Babel, keep the even balance of their judg ment in the midst of its noises, and bring their better self out of it unimpaired. There is comfort, however, unless I am woefully astray in my construction of existing literary appearances-for the ordinary reader of history. There is some hope that a new historical school is springing up, and that the coming generation will have the privilege of reading parts at least of their country's history in the pages of historians. This new school of history will consist, I take it, of writers who will strive with all their might to bring up before themselves, and ultimately before