is in his way, he has but to arise in his might and drive him, for there is no law to which the Indian can appeal for protection." This complaint is just. No law exists (unless it has been made very recently) to which an Indian may appeal for the punishment of any wrong done to him by a United States agent. And while the negro freeman is a citizen, the red man is not only a foreigner, but destitute of the rights accorded to unnaturalized aliens in American courts. The Rev. Principal Grant, in his book, "Ocean to Ocean," the new edition of which, I am glad to see, has received well-deserved commendation in the last Westminster Review (another proof that Canadian literature is beginning to receive recognition "at home"), thus explains the success of our Indian policy (pp. 385 and 388). "What is the secret of our wonderful success in dealing with the Indians? It can be told in very few words. We acknowledge their right and title to the land; and a treaty once made with them, we keep it. Lord Dufferin has pointed out, what is involved in our acknowledgement that the original title to the land exists in the Indian tribes and communities. Before we touch an acre, we make a treaty with the chiefs representing the bands we are dealing with, and having agreed upon and paid the stipulated price, we enter into possession, but not until then do we consider that we are entitled to deal with an acre.' It is well that this should be clearly understood, because the Indians themselves have no manner of doubt on the subject. At the North-west Angle, chief after chief said to the Governor: This is what we think, that the Great Spirit has planted us on this ground where we are, as you were where you came from. We think that where we are is our property.'

Something more than making a treaty is needed. It must be kept to the letter and in the spirit. I am not aware that the Indians ever broke a treaty that was fairly and solemnly made. They believe in the sanctity of an oath; and to a Christian nation a treaty made with true believers, heretics, or pagans, with mosque-goers or with church-goers, should be equally binding. To break a treaty made with these old lords and sons of the soil would be worse than to break one made with a nation able to resent a breach of faith." In such views, and in acting on such views, lies I think our "sovereign" method of dealing with our red

brothers, which our neighbours would find equally efficacious in dealing with theirs.

-What can be done, or can anything be done, to avert in any degree the almost certainly demoralizing effects of the next general election? In the keenness of the party contest which we know will ensue, how many falsehoods will be told, wilful misrepresentations originated or repeated, uncharitable and unkind shafts of personality launched at political opponents? And how many of these things will be done by men whom, in ordinary life, we are wont to regard as at least fairly truthful, honest, and kindly disposed ? But can the experience of yielding to the temptation to be dishonest for party purposes leave a man as honest as it found him? All known rules of morality must be wrong if it does not demoralize him just in proportion as he yields to the temptation. And-making all possible allowance for the mental discolouration of party bias, for ignorance, for misconception-we admit to ourselves that instances of actual dishonesty among political partizans are far more common than, for the moral and Christian credit of our country, it is at all pleasant to recognize. And the very commonness of the evil has become a plea to be used in defence of it. What everyone, or almost everyone does in politics must be right, or at least not very wrong. This, though generally put in more euphemistic phraseology, is the substance of the justification. And what a man does in political life is held as quite distinct from what he does in private life, so that even a professedly Christian man is held, by some Christians, to be not altogether inexcusable for his falsehood so long as it is a political one! "All is fair in love and war!" How often do we hear that wretchedly immoral saying, as if it were quite a sufficient salve to any over-sensitive conscience. have we, as moral beings, the slightest right to make any such distinction? Christianity as well as conscience teaches that it is not lawful to do evil that good may come; how much more that it is not lawful to do evil for a man's political advancement or that of his party, which is, after all, only an enlarged selfishness. Wherein does a lie for political advancement differ from a lie for pecuniary advancement? The fallacious idea that it does has done more to demoralize the public life of Canada than perhaps any other

But

influence. Now, is it not time that we should be growing out of this utterly untenable idea? Should not all persons in influential positions, who care about the morality of their country-ministers, professors, teachers-set themselves in determined opposition to the idea that " politics" form any excuse for any kind of immorality whatsoever? Do we not need special organizations to meet this evil as well as intemperance, for really it is growing quite as common? Why should not high-toned and patriotic men on both sides of political parties unite in a society for the purpose of discouraging utterly all political dishonesty, misrepresentation, unjustifiable personality, or any other wrong? Is there any sufficient reason why this should not be done? Have we not ten (political) men righteous enough to begin such a movement? If nothing is done, the next general election will certainly leave us lower in the moral scale than we stand now.

-If the country wants to be demoralized and means to be demoralized, I do not see how we are going to help it. Every intelligent man knows the hollowness if party cries, the falsity of party statements, the hypocrisy of party pretensions; and if men who know all this are still willing to be made tools of and ready to throw up their caps and drum up votes for the "standard-bearers" of party, they must e'en be allowed to have their own way. "The end is not yet." We should consider this, however, that, in an imperfect state of society, disinterested desire for the public good will never be a very powerful motive among the masses, and that consequently the only way in which interest can be kept alive in public matters is through a large admixture of personal and selfish motives. If we could suppose for a moment party spirit suddenly to flag in presence of a general election, the eloquence of Dr. Tupper, of Sir John A. Macdonald, and of Mr. Mackenzie to fall flat and dead on the ears of their former followers, and the voice of pure reason and patriotism alone to be heard in the land, what would the result be? The result would be that not one-tenth of the whole vote of the country would be polled, and that elections would go just as local interests and private feelings might determine. Does it follow that we all ought to be zealous partizans? By no means. A demonstration that superstition is a natural growth of the

human mind does not bind one who has shaken off superstition to try and re-enslave his intellect. No, let us watch the struggle and do what we can to make rational views prevail; but let us not be unduly discouraged if party passions seem to carry everything before them. They must have their fling. The torrent throws up a vast quantity of weed; but there is force and life in it; and anything is better than the cold calculations of selfishness, which would be only too likely to prevail if party spirit suddenly ceased to act. In allegiance to party there is at least a visible advance on simple allegiance to self, and that is something to be thankful for.

In the March number of the Fortnightly Review, Professor Huxley has an instructive article on William Harvey, of which, however, the last page or two suggests the possibly uncharitable idea, that the article might have been written to bring in at the end a masked battery against the opponents of vivisection. He says, indeed, that he does not think the occasion a fitting one "for the discussion of the burning question of vivisection." But he, nevertheless, does discuss it with no little animus and misrepresentation of those who oppose vivisection on the ground that "might" does not constitute the "right" to inflict cruelty, and whose indignation has been stirred-not by experiments like that of Harvey, on a demonstrably insensible animal," but by authentic reports of horrible cruelties perpetrated on highly sensitive creatures, such as dogs, cats, and other domestic animals, the almost humanly intelligent companions of our daily life. And in many cases the experiments had not even the excuse of "the good of the human race," being performed simply to gratify curiosity in verifying the previous experiments of others. The learned Professor closes with a remarkable paragraph, in which he evidently considers he has brought the matter to a reductio ad absurdum. He says, "Possibly the world is entering upon a phase in which the recognised whole duty of man will be to avoid the endurance or the infliction of physical pain, whatever future alleviation of misery may be its consequence, however great the positive benefit to mankind which may flow thereupon." Observe the words in italics. Professor Huxley puts the endurance and the infliction of pain

upon the same level, as if both were equally heroic! Regulus we all call a hero (never mind that we are told now that his embassy was a myth), but his torturers and he have always been supposed to be morally antipodal. But "nous avons changé tout cela." In the light of modern morality, we shall have to look on inquisitors as no less praiseworthy than their victims, because they at least professed to be guided by the motive of "positive benefit to mankind," and they were so brave in-inflicting pain, because they certainly feared not (in Professor Huxley's words) at least "to inflict pain"in a good cause! We have always venerated the heroism of the physician who dared personal suffering and death that he might find the secret of some fatal disease. Now it turns out that he would have been just about as praiseworthy had he devolved the "vicarious suffering" on some miserable slave! For if a man may cruelly torture an animal because he thinks it is in his power to do so, and because he thinks it for the good of the human race, there are, on Professor Huxley's principles, no reasons why he might not with equal justice, torture some helpless fellow-being, if this also were for the good of the race. Why should a "race" which can claim on no reasonable grounds a higher life than the animal one, be so insufferably arrogant in declaring that all the rest of creation may righteously be tortured for its good? Or if indeed there is a future life after all, and one of these same vivisectors should, on entering it, find himself as absolutely in the power of some member of a superior "race as the animal was here in his power, what moral plea would he have to urge why he might not in his turn be as relentlessly tortured for the good, physical or moral, of other superior beings? Probably he would then see it in a different light, the light in which a vivisector's victim, if suddenly endowed with reason, would be likely to see it now. He goes on to say, however, that when the world has entered upon the phase he describes, various terrible things will happen. First, "crime must go unpunished, for what justification is there for torturing a poor thief or murderer except for the general good of society?' Natural enough for a utilitarian, but he seems to forget that in such a new "phase," it is possible that an old-fashioned idea called "moral desert" might have some influence.

Furthermore, "there will be no means of transport, or nothing to ride except steamengines and bicycles, for the torture' involved in the training and in the labour of beasts of draught and burden will be insufferable." Well, we have heard it suggested that our methods of training might and ought to be improved, so as to avoid the torture," and that the cruelties inflicted in the use of such animals are a fair subject for our humanitarian societies to prevent. Wouldn't this be a possible alternative? But further: "No man will think of eating meat or killing noxious insects." Here again, surely we have heard of "painless killing," which most intelligent people regard as a simple duty towards the animals we use for food. "Sport," terrible to say, "will be abolished." Ruat cœlum! But the people who do not see the high moral influence of battues and pigeon-shootings, and putting thousands of innocent birds annually to a death of lingering torture may be excused for thinking this not so terrible an evil after all! And-climax of all—"war will have followed it, not so much because war is fraught with evil to men, but because of the awful torture' which it inflicts directly upon horses and mules, to say nothing of the indirect dyspeptic sufferings of the vultures and wolves, which are tempted by our wickedness to over-eat themselves!" Surely, such gross and heartless flippancy in dealing with such a subject is unworthy of a man of Professor Huxley's standing! It seems superfluous to remark that most people in this age have been in the habit of considering war, in all its aspects, unnatural, horrible, alike opposed to the spirit of Christianity and of true civilization, and would joyfully welcome a "phase" of the world in which it should disappear. But Professor Huxley tells us he would "be somewhat loath to exist in a world in which his notions of what men should be and do will have no application." He might then have some sympathy with those who now often find their "notions" placed out of relation with the actual, and their joy of existence marred by such things as war and battues, and the countless miseries which man inflicts on the creatures under his control, human or otherwise. This subject may be a difficult or a perplexing one, but Professor Huxley's remarkable reductio ad absurdum will hardly throw much light upon it.