so as to be able to exercise a leading and effective influence over public opinion on questions of social amelioration. He has himself written much, though nothing of permanent value, on these subjects, and did not approach them with unwashed hands when he published his pamphlet in 1864. In this pamphlet, he says the labour question is one which it is his business, both as a Christian and as a bishop, to deal with: as a Christian, because Christ, as Saviour of the world, seeks not only to redeem men's souls, but to heal their sorrows and soften their condition; and as a bishop, because the Church had, according to her ancient custom, imposed upon him, as one of his consecration vows, that he would, "in the name of the Lord, be kind and merciful to the poor and the stranger, and to all that are in any kind of distress." He considers the labour question of the present day to be the very serious and plain question, how the great bulk of the working classes are to get the bread and clothing necessary to sustain them in life. Things have come to this pass in consequence of two important economic changes--which he incorrectly ascribes to the political revolution at the end of last century, merely because they have taken place mostly since that date--the spread of industrial freedom, and the ascendancy of the large capitalists. In consequence of these changes the labourer is now treated as a commodity, and the rate of his wages settled by the same law that determines the price of every other commodity--the cost of its production; and the employer is always able to press wages down to the least figure which the labourer will take rather than starve. Ketteler accepts entirely Lassalle's teaching about "the iron and cruel law," and holds it to have been so conclusively proved in the course of the controversy that it is no longer possible to dispute it without a deliberate intention of deceiving the people. Now there is no doubt that Ricardo's law of value is neither so iron nor so cruel as Lassalle took it to be; and that when Lassalle alleged that in consequence of this law 96 per cent. of the population of Germany had to support their families on less than ten shillings a week, and were therefore in a state of chronic starvation, he based his statement on a calculation of Dieterici's, which was purely conjectural, and which, besides, disregarded the fact that in working-class families there were usually more breadwinners than one. Ketteler, however, adopts this whole statement of the case implicitly, and says the social problem of our day is simply how to emancipate the labouring class from the operation of this economic law. "It is no longer possible to doubt that the whole material existence of almost the entire labouring population--_i.e._, of much the greatest part of men in modern states, and of their families--that the daily question about the necessary bread for man, wife, and children, is exposed to all the fluctuations of the market and