Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/481

 REVIEWS 467

that his scheme has any special sanction from the natural law of equal freedom ; and when he lays down the rule that " the play which has for its hero a pickpocket" should be "forbidden public exhibition" (see p. 327), as one of the corollaries of individualism, he becomes grotesque. And so, when (on page 303 and elsewhere) our authors write in favor of the compulsory opening of the ports of the British colonies to duty- free goods, and the compulsory imposition upon them of "free compe- tition in the supply of capital to labor," they may or may not be advocat- ing a wise policy ; in either case they have a right to express their opinion

yet when their advocacy of the use of the army and navy for this pur- pose is put forth as a part of the great gospel of individual liberty

a gospel which requires (see p. 295) that a father shall in no wise be prevented from "bringing up a family as he likes, and from regulating his household according to his own notions," regardless of the effect upon the other members of the family of the "notions" of an ignorant and brutal parent and when in support of their compulsory freedom they say that "to compel people to be prosperous cannot be called oppression," and coolly remark (p. 151), in reference to the protests of those who do not wish to be coerced into adopting Messrs. Hake and Wesslau's view of what is good for them, that " the unreasonable we need not heed" we are left in a state of uncertainty whether we should most admire our authors' logic or their sense of humor.

FREDERIC W. SANDERS.

The Law of Civilization and Decay. An Essay on History. By BROOKS ADAMS. viii-f-3O2. Price $2.50. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., Lim. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1895.

MR. ADAMS is a fair example of a certain class of economic writers who have treated history somewhat as the old theologians used to treat the Scriptures as a sort of rusty nail box out of which they selected odds and ends of broken nails or rusty screws in order to tack some framework of doctrine together, the likeness of which was never to be found in the thought of God or man. Mr. Adams not only has a theory, but as it used to be said about Matthew Henry's Commentary, that he made even the foxes' tails point to Christ, Mr. Adams makes all history point to his theory. If the facts do not fit his theory, he does not hesitate to cut off a foot now and then or stretch a joint.