Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/778

 756 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL anything in this world. The rulers of mankind perhaps deserve, and at all events will not mind, his severity. What the historians have to suffer may be guessed from the fact that even the late Mr. Greea who ex- pressly renounced the frivolity of writing a ' drum and trumpet history' is made to tingle for filling his Short History with a string of battles. Coming to men of business, we find that capitalists are bad and land- owners much worse. Not only the later perversions of the Poor-Law. but even the original statute of Elizabeth was a contrivance of employers to make the community pay the wages of their men. Of the improving landowner of the eighteenth century we are told that ' he would not have done so much for agriculture if he had not expected to make something out of his condescension.' Certainly he would not. But is not this rather an unfair way of suggesting that it is only landlords, or at most landlords and capitalists, who ever act from motives of self- interest ? If the landowners supported the Factory Acts, if the capitalists agitated for the repeal of the Corn Laws, ' the working classes cannot fail to observe that each party was their friend only in so far as they could injure their opponents.' No allowance is nade for any of the subtler causes of human error; for the force of habit or tradition, for the influence of inadequate theory, for the difficulty of striking a balance between the good and evil of an untried policy. Twice does the author pause to make the excellent reflection that historians should chronicle facts and not vituperate persons. It is therefore the more to be regretted that he should have introduced into a useful educational work the rancour of party politics. F. C. MO.TAGUE Studies i Statistics, Social, Political, and Medical. BY C. B. Loads?Art, I.A., M.B., &c. With Mps and Disgraces. (Stanford) 1891. DR. LONGSTAFF has accomplished a task almost as heroic and beneficent as that of the Prophet Ezekiel. He has put life into the dry figures of the Registrar General. His several chapters (often separate lectures reprinted)are not meant to form one book with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. They fall readily into three distinct groups. The subject of the first may be called English Demography; its chapters deal with the births, deaths, marriages, and census of England, with the growth of the towns and movements of the population. The subject of the second group of chapters (which in this case are consecutive) is the Growth of New Nations; to most readers this will probably be the most attractive part of the whole treatise. The third group includes the Medical essays (on Diarrhcea, Fever, Consumption, Hydrophobia). .Though these medical essays cannot be adequately estimated by an gnorant layman, the latter, if he be acquainted with Mill's Logic, will be pleased to find in them some fine examples of the Experimental Methods (e.g. p. 370).