It would be exaggerated no doubt, I willingly grant it, to take away from repression every mark of moral reparation, all weight of “reformative power”; but I am always shocked to hear partial responsibilities spoken of. From the social point of view, the responsibility remains perfect; it is united, indeed, to the very act of having caused injury, beyond all appreciation. From the point of view of the individual, the word responsibility has the grave inconvenience of implying that the quantity of liberty or free-will attributable to the delinquent is measured. It would be less compromising and more exact, to value simply the quality, the worth of the delinquent, according to the totality of his affective, intellectual, voluntary, and pathological character, according to the nature and the conditions of the act of which he is accused, etc. We should thus escape contradictions of words which easily become contradictions of fact; we should no more stumble at this latent difficulty of free-will, in medium cases—for _serious cases_ are never difficult. Words exercise a tyranny which jurists would do well to distrust. Is not this, moreover, just about what M. Maus means by his favorite formula—that justice ought “to individualise as much as possible”? It is a pity only that he does not present his conclusions with the requisite clearness. His exposition is not distinct and frank. He has mental habitudes, subtilities of reasoning, which are of value at the Palais, but which it is suitable to rid oneself of when writing a book: his would gain much by being entirely remodeled, made clear and disentangled. * * * * * M. E. DE LAVELEYE offers to the public a fourth edition, revised and considerably augmented, of his great work, _De la propriété et de ses formes primitives_. We have not to recall the numerous facts which this work contains and the knowledge of which has become sufficiently general; nor to commend M. de Laveleye, who no longer expects fresh praises for it. I have only to express the regret that he should have retained the theory of property expounded in the last chapter of his book, or rather the metaphysical conception of right with which he connects it. It seems as if he wished to excuse himself from reducing property to the simple value of a fact, modifiable in its forms, by indicating as a fixed point an “order” which shall be the best, which shall be _known_ and _wished_ of God, _sought_ and _realised_ by man.