Nor has the doctrine of spiritual equality been without its effect in consoling the lowly for their inferiority of rank. Hereafter scientific conviction, derived from the study of the social organism, may supply the place of religious impressions as a motive for acquiescence in things as they are. At present it is the destructive process of science that has almost exclusively taken place in the mind of the Radical proletarian. Believing now that this world is all, he naturally desires to grasp his full share of its good things without delay. His sensibility having been quickened with his intelligence, he feels inferiority as well as privation, and is impelled by social envy as well as by desire. His education has advanced just far enough to enable him to imbibe theories which coincide with his wishes. If he cannot understand the fine reasonings of Mr. George, he can understand the confiscation, and he thinks that so much fine reasoning must make the confiscation moral. Communism and semi-communism are rife; there is a tendency to them even at the Universities, and in other high places. Perhaps the loss of faith in the Church leads some to see an indemnity for it in a communistic polity. If there is not in England, as there is in Germany, a strong Socialistic party, there appears to be a growing disposition to make a Socialistic use of the suffrage. There is certainly in many quarters an exaggerated idea of the powers and duties of the fictitious being styled the State. One conspicuous candidate for the succession to the leadership, at all events, is evidently holding out hopes of a Socialistic system of high taxation for the benefit of those who produce least, and he appears inclined to head a crusade against the property of all landowners, and of all owners of houses in towns. Nor is he without rivals in this quest of popularity on the Tory side. The ball of agrarianism which has been set rolling by recent legislation in Ireland, rolls on, and its course is not likely to stop in Skye. All this may be working for good. The writer of this paper, at all events, has no inclination to take the despondent view. But surely there is enough to warn statesmen that they must exercise forecast, that they must try, while they can, to secure to the nation a stable and rational government; that they must not hastily divorce power from intelligence and responsibility; that they must not plunge the country headlong into unorganized and unregulated democracy. If this Parliament comes to an end without having created any conservative safeguards, while it has instituted a suffrage destined evidently soon to be universal, the reins will have been thrown on the necks of the horses, and the last leverage of Conservatism will be gone. M. Taine has just shown us whither horses with the reins upon their necks may run, and what wreck they may make of their own hopes. It is true that great resignation, and even apathy, has been sometimes shown by the masses in