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 XKW HOOK-;, -joy ami unproved tlu-orirs. It has not been based on facts, observation and experience. Hence it arises that when the law comes to lie administered, when it is confronted with the actual t'aets of the problem which it is supposed to solve, it breaks down because it has not token account of these facts. From the fact that laws have been so unsuccessful in the past Mr. Spence arrives at the conclusion that there should be little or no law-making at all. But surely this does not inevitably follow. AVhat follows is that the business of law-making is an exceedingly com- plex matter: that the good intentions of the legislator are not a security for the goodness of the law which he enacts : that laws, if they are to be of service to the community, must be resting on a wide and solid basis of fact and experience. Mr. Spence's strictures on the laws of the past and of many of the laws now in operation may be perfectly just in the main. But it does not follow from these strictures that society requires hardly any laws at all. All that Mr. Spence proves is the necessity for proceeding to legislate with the utmost circumspection : the necessity for mastering all the facts of the case : the need of checking all pre- conceived theories and opinions and of collecting and being guided solely by the facts and arguments which bear upon the legislative problem to be solved. The fault of Mr. Spence's book is that he assumes the equality of all citizens in the community. But this is notoriously not the case. It is true no doubt in theory that they are all equal before the law. But in many instances equality before the law does not amount to much when there is an absence in economic equality between man and man. The individual in a position of extreme economic dependence occupies a very different status before the law in many important particulars from the individual in a position of economic affluence. In order to secure justice to all and justice is Mr. Spence's political ideal the state is obliged to protect its weaker and more dependent members. The duty of protecting the weak the economically and physically weak is a duty which involves legislation. At the same time it must be admitted with Mr. Spence that such legislation often misses its mark. It does not take sufficient account of the complexity of the problems before it. The value of Mr. Spence's book is to show how very difficult it is to legislate ; how easy it is to make matters worse instead of better ; how circumspect all law-makers ought to be ; how important it is that all law should be the matured result of an exhaustive knowledge of the facts. Tin Conscience of th<' Kia<i is a book which shows how difficult it is to legislate with wisdom and success. Th Sui-itil I'hilosophi/ of Rodbrrtus. By E. 0. K. GOXNER, Professor of I'.conomic Science at the University College, Liverpool. London : Macmillan & Co., 1899. Pp. 209. In the present volume the author attempts to combine the social and economic teaching of Kodbertus into a systematic whole. Like most modern socialists Rodbertus has his own philosophy of history. He divides the social history of mankind into three periods, which are described by Mr. Gonner as " the family or tribal period, the state or national period, and lastly, far in the future, the period of organised humanity". We have passed through the first of these periods in all the more civilised parts of the world: in the West we are far advanced in the second. The third is still in the far-off future. One of the chief features of the first or family period is " a sense of union and the re- cognition of the utility of co-operation and mutual assistance " among the members of the family group. The second or state period is sub-