make the king absolute in Prussia; he desired that Cæsar should reign over Germany; and to-day the king and the Cæsar are embodied in a young man who has set aside the old Chancellor, and believes he has received from heaven the omnipotence and omniscience of God himself.

The experience and talent of Frederick III. together with his respect for public opinion, led him to retain Bismarck at his post, subject only to some slight restrictions. But the Chancellor, in his shortsightedness, filled young William's head with absolutist ideas; spurred and excited him to display impatience with his poor father; and when, thus nurtured, his ward opened his mouth to satisfy his appetite, he swallowed up the Chancellor as a wild beast devours a keeper.

It was the hand of providence!

In few statesmen has it been seen so clearly as in the case of the Chancellor that no great man can make himself greater than a great idea. Opposed to the Germanic Union in its creative period, at the time of the revolution of 1848, he accepted it much later, not so much of his own initiative and free will as in obedience to the teachings of unpleasant circumstances. In that conversion, which took fourteen years to accomplish; lay the veritable glory of his life, and he proved therein, by successive and tardy gradations, that he could tenaciously avail himself of his courage, and lead up to the triumph of the newly created and loved project with marvelous art. I cannot forget that to his efforts we owe the ruin of Austrian despot.. ism and of Napoleon's Cæsarism; the reëstablishment of Hungarian independence; the return of Italy's long-lost provinces to her bosom; the end of the Pope's temporal power, and the fortunate occasion of the new birth of the Republic in France. In his schemes Bismarck has forwarded a higher ideal of progress and, consciously or unconsciously, has served the universal interests of democracy.

But he has achieved his undeniable victories by means and procedures which have not fitted him for the position of a German deputy, and do not lend him any force, either moral or material, for his new elective office. The whole of his great edifice is founded on a complete oblivion of Parliamentary traditions, to-day courted lovingly by him, their most crafty enemy, whose inconsistency is extraordinary. What programme can Bismarck develop to his colleagues which will have the moral character of necessary work? The divine word called human eloquence descends only on the lips of that apostleship which redeems a nation from slavery and impels it forward. If Bismarck accepts the liberal and tolerant policy of to-day, will he not thereby countenance the Emperor who has ridiculed him and Caprivi who has audaciously seated himself in that position from which Bismarck thought never to fall until his death? The great man is a poor appraiser of ideas, accepting them from every quarter whence they blow to him, if only they will fill his sail and propel his bark; but he will never understand what mischief he could work to his enemies by opposing a programme of advanced democratic reform to the Imperial programme whose fixity resembles the rigidity of death. But what liberty can he invoke-he who has disavowed and injured all liberties? What remains for him to do? He has absolutely no resource at his disposal with which to undertake a campaign of active opposition.

Bismarck may believe an old admirer of his personality and of his genius, though an adversary of his policy, and of the government dependent on that policy. He possess no qualifications whatever for the position he has chosen. In the Parliament, where formerly he strode in with sabre, and belt, and spurred boots, a helmet under his arm, a cuirass on his breast, he will now enter like a chicken-hearted charity-school boy, and that assembly which he formerly whipped with a strong hand like school-boys, laughed at and caricatured in often brutal sarcasm, ridiculed at every instant, ignored in the calculation of the budget and the army estimates during long years, and sometimes divided and dispersed by his strokes,

they, the rabble, will trample on him, like the Lilliputians on Gulliver, incapable of estimating his stature; and eternity and history will speedily bury him, not like a despot in Egyptian porphyry, but like a buffoon. Society, like nature, devours everything it does not need. The species of men to which he belongs, is fading out and becoming extinct. Modern science teaches that extinct species do not reappear. Remain, then, Bismarck, in retirement and await, without neurotic impatience, the final judgment of God and of history.

THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION IN CHILI. MAXIMILIANO IBAÑEZ.

La Nouvelle Revue, Paris, October 15.

HE war in Chili has been in great part personal, and waged

THE war in Ce abuse of power by art persona; but it ged

also been a war between the authorities, a war of Parliament against the Executive. This struggle of Parliament with the chief of the executive power much resembles those struggles which established in England the omnipotence of Parliament. It resembles particularly the struggle of the English Parliament with Charles the First, in the motives which provoked it, in the conditions under which it was pursued, and by the way in which it ended. In both cases, there were the same encroachments by the Chief of the State; there was a resort to arms; there was, finally, a Chief of the State overthrown. In Chili there would have been also a decapitation, if it had not been forestalled by a suicide.

The Chilian Congress comes out of the struggle more powerful, and justly proud of the task it has accomplished. Unless for events which cannot be foreseen at present, it will never again be resigned to play second fiddle to the Presidents. These latter, on the contrary, will be obliged to govern in conformity with the wishes of Congress. To modify the wellknown phrase, in Chili-the President will preside, but will not govern.

Another consequence, not less important, of this revolution will be the rise of public spirit. This rise results, not only from the considerable diminution that has been made and will be made in the powerful means of action which former Presidents controlled beneath the administrative machinery; it is a consequence principally of the practical demonstration of an error, which was considered to be an axiom by every one in Chili, namely, that the authority of the Presidents was all powerful, and that it was impossible to contend with it successfully. This idea may be considered to have been a heavy load, which stifled in the best endowed individuals all movement of independence and initiative. People were accustomed to expect everything from government and to consider impracticable any enterprise, political or even industrial, which could not count in advance on the support of the Government, or, at least, its good will.

On another side, the evils which flow from official pressure in elections for Congress and President have been too deeply felt to give this pressure any chance of restoration. Political parties issue from this strife masters of themselves, and it is not probable that they will again hand over to the Chiefs of the State the direction of the opinion of the country and the choice of the men who are to represent it.

These political transformations will not be the only benefits accruing from the triumph of the revolution. For a long time past Government officials have been corrupt in Chili. During the last months of the Government of President Balmaceda, this corruption reached its utmost boundary. Unable to find honest men willing to aid him, Mr. Balmaceda, in his work of persecution and torture against the citizens, and of ruin against the country, had recourse to men without scruples and without any principle save their own interest. These men were invested with different branches of the administration, as with a thing suitable to be managed for their personal profit. Even

justice, after all the courts of the republic were closed, was delivered to magistrates of this kind. The country was given up to be sacked by the public functionaries and judges. The triumph of the revolution signifies the expulsion, which has already been effected, of such Government officials, and the recall of the good servants of the country.

It is, then, very natural to foresee considerable changes in the manners and institutions of the country. Some of these changes are the result of the events themselves, such as the strengthening of the parliamentary regime, the development of public spirit, and the abolition of official interference with the elections. Other changes will be effected by constitutional amendments or legislative enactments. All these reforms are not yet to make. On the contrary, the most of them have been already voted by the two branches of Congress. A project of amendment of the Constitution, approved by the Congress which has overthrown Balmaceda, gives the Chambers the right to convoke themselves during a recess. A project of the same nature requires the Ministers to cease to exercise their functions as soon as censure has been passed upon them by the Chambers. There has been approved also a third project of amendment of the Constitution, already contained in a law in force, declaring the absolute incompatibility between legislative functions and salaried employment by the State, and forbidding Members of Congress to be appointed to any paid or salaried office during their term of office, and six months after the expiration of their term.

All these reforms and others constitute the common flag under which the political parties of Chili took up arms against President Balmaceda. The next Congress will soon meet and ratify the constitutional amendments proposed by its predecessor and approve of projects of laws not yet voted in their entirety. As the most notable men of Chili will compose this Congress, we may be sure that reforms of such gravity will be effected with prudence and due deliberation. The only difficulty which this next Congress will have to guard against will be the absolute unanimity of views among its members, for all shades of the Liberal party (Liberals properly so called, Nationalists and Radicals) and the Conservative party having combined to bring about the revolution, it is certain that this fact will have, at least at first, and for the first time in Chili, the odd result of a Congress without an opposition party.

Chili has known how to cure, in great part, the economic and financial ills which the revolution has engendered, by assuring the perfecting of her political organization, so that the ambition of parties will not be able to trouble it. The vigor of the inhabitants of Chili, and the fertility of its soil will bring a remedy for the hard trials it has just undergone.

THE PLACE OF PARTY IN THE POLITICAL SYSTEM. ANSON D. MORSE.

Annals of the American Academy, Philadelphia, November. ARTY fills a large space in the world of politics; yet very

PART

their attention to philosophy

of party. This neglect may be due in some degree to the fact that the establishment of party government is of recent date, and that before that time party was regarded as the enemy of the State. Under governments which rest on force, as well as under governments that base their claims on divine right, there is no room for party. Such governments see in party a denial of their pretensions and an aspirant to their seats. The dislike of party on theoretic grounds was confirmed by its early conduct. It grew up in an atmosphere of irresponsibility. It arrayed itself against all conservative influences, good or bad; and this hostility has always stood in the way of the discovery of its functions and the recognition of its usefulness. Had the framers of the Constitution of the United States fully recognized that the system they planned would be worked by party, they would not have designed so futile an arrangement as the electoral college. [See Bryce: Hamilton and De Tocqueville.]

But whatever may be the excuse for past neglect, there can be none for its continuance. We live to-day under party government. We want good government; and the first step towards securing this is to acquaint ourselves with the nature, capacity, and limitation of our new ruler. But party is by no means identical with government. It is both something more and something less. It is one of a number of factors which together constitute the system by which the political life and progress of the State are maintained. To clearly apprehend what place party holds in this system, it is necessary to understand the nature of the State and of the several factors which constitute the organs of its activity.

The State may be defined as a people politically organized in such a way that the political wants of each and 'all are satisfied. A community may be so organized as to satisfy most of the wants of its members as citizens; yet if it must go outside for satisfaction of even one of these it is not a State. In this sense

neither Canada nor Massachusetts is a State. But political self-sufficiency, although essential to every true State, does not imply isolation. Interdependence among States in matters non-political is not only desirable but indispensable.

The organ through which the State provides for its ordinary wants is government. Government is the agent commissioned by the State to do certain things in certain ways and for such length of time as the State sees fit to continue the commission. It is well to separate in idéa the agent from the agency. The agent being the person or the group of persons who govern, and the agency the post or group of posts which they fill. Government is the creature of the State. Its office is to serve the State. It has no rights as against the State.

But how shall the State secure this obedience and fidelity? In the earlier stages of political development the State did not, as a rule, secure them at all. Government regularly usurped the functions of the State. When Louis XIV. asserted that he, the king, was the State, he but voiced a claim according with the practice of most governments before his day and for some time afterwards. The English were the first to outgrow this political immaturity. Amid the fierce conflicts of the Reformation period, and under the tactful, though despotic, guidance of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, the people learned to think for themselves, and the State, apart from government, came to have a mind and will of its own. This was one step towards emancipation. The second belongs to the seventeenth century. The struggle between Parliament and the Stuarts and between Parliament and Cromwell resulted in the overthrow of the theory of the divine right, not only of kings, but of government, and the establishment of the doctrine of the supremacy of the State over government. This, I think, is the innermost meaning of the Bill of Rights of 1789. With this supreme victory arose the question: How shall its fruits be secured? How can the State make sure that the Government will always execute its will?

[Here follows a discussion of the different means of attaining this end. Revolution, the oldest and crudest, is too costly, and is inadequate to secure permanent efficiency. The constitutional convention is open to the same final objections that apply to revolutions. The written constitution can never adequately express the will of the State. It can only give general direction. Government while observing the letter of the constitution may contravene the will and the interests of the State. In some States the Government may resolve itself at will into a Constituent Convention, as in England, France, and Germany, and make important changes in the Constitution. This strengthens the government at the risk of the prerogatives of the State.]

The most effective instrument for accomplishing the desired end is party. The American colonies received this institution, as they did most of their political outfit, from the mother country. After the formation of the Union it developed remarkably, and to-day the American party-system presents a perfection of organization not elsewhere to be found.

Party holds government in subjection to the State, by educating and organizing public opinion, and by administering the government. Public opinion is what the people think and feel upon public questions, after they have studied them care

fully and attained the mood which is favorable to wise judgment. Party is the most important agent in clearing up the first crude thoughts and blind feelings. of the people, and crystallizing them into intelligent public opinion. Party keeps the people fully informed in regard to public matters. What may

be to the interest of one party to conceal is to the interest of the other to discover and proclaim. The ultimate aim of party is to secure, as the basis of public policy, the adoption of the principles professed by it. The principles of different parties, considered collectively, are the principles of the people. The result of these contests is to bring the people closer to the fundamental truths of politics, and better judges of what concerns the public welfare. The party in power administers the government, and is removable at will. In England this can be done at any moment when Parliament is in session; in the United States it can be done at least once in four years. Moreover, the State is constantly checking, rebuking, or encouraging the party in power, which listens respectfully and obediently to every manifestation of its master's will.

The party system constitutes an informal, but real and powerful primary organization of the State. It is the first factor of the political system to interpret, and the first to give expression to the will of the State.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

RUSSIAN BARBARITIES AND THEIR APOLOGIST. THE REVEREND DOCTOR Adler, Chief Rabbi oF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

IT

North American Review, New York, November. ́T would be beyond the scope of the present article to describe in minute detail the various phases of the persecution to which the Jew of Russia is at present subjected, It may be of advantage to present them in a succinct outline. With the downfall of Ignatief, the outrages which had disgraced the years 1881-82 came to an end. Whether this downfall was brought about, or at least hastened, by the protest raised in the public press, and especially by the memorable meeting at the Mansion House, I will not now stay to inquire. It has been cynically said that the Muscovite does not mind acting brutally, but that he entertains the strongest possible dislike to being regarded as a brute by others. After 1882, we hear no more of bloodshed, pillage, and outrages on women. But other methods were sought to render the lives of the despised Hebrews insupportable. The greatest hardship under which they have suffered since the period of their settlement was their restriction to fifteen gubernia, besides Poland, as places of residence. These fifteen provinces cover a comparatively large area, but contain few large towns. Yet the four and a half or five millions who inhabit Russia and Poland managed to earn their subsistence. We hear of them in the towns as the principal traders and artisans, in the villages as farmers, mill-owners, and dairymen. They were also tacitly permitted to establish themselves in important commercial centres outside the pale of settlement, special permission being given to craftsmen, merchants of the first guild, and those who had received a university education. In the fateful year of 1882, by severe legislative restrictions, the Jews were forbidden to live outside the Pale, or outside the towns in the Pale, and were forbidden to own farms or manage landed property. At first these May laws, as they were termed, were allowed to remain inoperative. But since the summer of last year they have been enforced by stringent orders from headquarters, with the effect of crowding enormous populations into the congested towns. Obsolete laws are enforced with vigor, and thousands are being daily expelled from their homes and deprived of their means of honorable livelihood, for no other offense than that of being Jews.

The result of these measures is most deplorable. A corre

spondent testifies: "Among the population of vast Russia, I never met with persons looking more wretched than the emaciated Jews. In all Europe there is no class of men who find it harder to earn a morsel of bread than is the case with ninetenths of the Russian Jews." No wonder, then, that an exodus has commenced as great and impetuous as that which took place ten years ago. The poor exiles pour forth over the lines of railway leading from the frontier towns of Russia to the ports of Hamburg and Bremen. Haggard men and women are there so weak that they are hardly able to walk, children in scanty raiment, and whole families that had lived in comparative affluence, driven at a day's notice from their homesteads, and from the land which, with all its faults, they still loved."

Those best entitled to form a judgment, trace this persecution to religious intolerance. Persecutions of a similar character, although of less intensity, are enforced against Catholics, Protestants, and Dissenters of all sorts, and urgent efforts are made to stamp out the Uniates and Stundists. But the persecution of the Jew is of a greatly aggravated character, and carried on with a more relentless malice; first, because he is not a Slav, and the watchword has gone forth: Russia for the Russians. Despite all the obstacles with which the Jew has been hedged, he has thriven. The Jew, whom the Russian hardly ever names without an opprobrious epithet, has outstripped the orthodox Slav in the struggle for life. Hence the present desire to crush and exterminate the poor Israelite.

But a writer in the August number of the North American Review aspires to throw "new light" on this question. Professor Goldwin Smith* alleges that the source of the trouble is not religious, but social and economic; that the Jew has brought these troubles upon himself by his parasitic tendencies and tribal exclusiveness. He pleads, moreover, that the Jewish accounts of the atrocities of 1881 and 1882, published in the London Times, were in most cases exaggerated, and in some to an extraordinary degree. He would palliate the outrages committed on women in 1882 by contending that they could be reduced to half a dozen cases. Assuming for a moment that this were so, does it lessen the criminality of a deed? Was not an insult offered by one ruffianly tax-gatherer .to one Kentish maiden sufficient to stir all England to rebellion? Mr. Smith commends the reports of the British consuls, comprised in two Blue Books of 1881, to our study. I join in the recommendation, and would ask the Professor to read carefully the second Blue Book concerning the treatment of the Jews in Russia. He would find that Sir E. Thornton, the English Ambassador, encloses a cutting from the Golos, saying that in Balta alone these cases are numerous. Of these, ten are already known, but the remaining victims are ashamed to come

forward.

But to return to the apology advanced for the anti-Semitic movement in Russia. "The Russian government has never been guilty of persecution. The movement has its main cause in circumstances purely economical, inasmuch as the Hebrews are a parasitic race." On the very same day that this imputation was published, its falsehood was triumphantly proved by men whose information was not derived at secondhand, but who had studied the question on the spot. I refer to the articles on "Jewish Colonization" and "The Russian. Persecution," by Mr. Arnold White and Mr. E. B. Lanin, which appeared in the New Review of August. In graphic language they portray the activity of the Jews as contrasted with the idleness of the general population. If they succeed in trade better than their Christian competitors, it is because the wares they manufacture are of a better quality and sold at a more reasonable price. But I would especially commend M. Leroy Beaulieu's great work, L'Empire des Tsars et les Russes, in which he meets the charge that the Jew has an aversion to See LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. III., No. 14, p. 369, No. 17, p. 454, and No 19. P. 509.

manual labor and lives by exploiting the labors of others, by the admission that while this is in a certain sense true, it is true only in the sense that he prefers to act the part of an intermediary between the producer and the consumer, thus maintaining the circulation; a matter as essential to the body politic as to the living body. If the Jew or the Semite, he asks, is to be censured for taking this rôle, why not the Christians who are similarly engaged in it?

But Mr. Smith's most calumnious and mischievous indictment is the allegation that Nihilism is supposed to be recruited partly from the Jews. It is difficult to use the language of moderation respecting a writer who flings forth an accusation such as this, resting on no more solid a foundation than a mere supposition-an accusation which might be fraught with the direst consequences to the unhappy people against whom it is recklessly leveled. Penal codes and social vexations are but too well calculated to sting the Jews of Russia into hatred. But so deeply is the virtue of loyalty ingrained in the Hebrew mind, so ardent is his love of law and order, so profound is his horror of assassination, that the proportion of those who are mixed up with revolutionary plots is extraordinarily small. Much might be said in extenuation of the guilt of the Autocrat of all the Russias, shut off as he is by a dense wall of officialism from the free and wholesome current of public opinion. But no excuse can be made for one who, privileged to breathe the air of freedom and religious tolerance which wafts through the British Empire, does not hesitate to palliate wrongs, dark and huge as the mountain, and to justify barbarities that cry aloud to Heaven for cessation and redress.

THE FOOD-SUPPLY OF THE FUTURE. W. O. ATWATER.

Century, New York, November.

WASTE IN THE PRODUCTION AND USE OF ANIMAL FOODS, AND ITS PREVENTION.

WE

E are better fed than the people of Europe, and do more work; but we use more food than we need. Part of the excess is simply thrown away; the rest is eaten, to the detriment of health. Our chief wastefulness is with meats and sweetmeats. People in the United States are generally able to have the kind of food they like and all they want of it. Sugar is abundant and cheap, and is consumed in immense quantities.

But the worst wastefulness is in the production and use of meats. People of this country buy excessive quantities of meat, especially of fat meat. A moderate amount of meat is necessary, but the trouble is our lack of moderation. Not only is its excessive use injurious, but the waste it involves is greater than is implied in the actual cost.

raw material. The making of meat is a process of transforming the vegetable protein, fats, and carbohydrates of grass and grain into the animal protein and fat of beef, pork, and mutton. The same applies to milk, eggs, and other animal foods. With most economical feeding it takes many pounds of hay or corn to make a pound of beef or pork. A large amount of soil product must be consumed to produce a small amount of animal food. Hence animal foods are costlier than vegetable. This explains why in most parts of the world meat is the food of only the well-to-do, while the poor live almost entirely on vegetable food. Ordinary people in Europe eat but little meat, and in India and China none at all.

Meat-making in the United States to-day is unnecessarily wasteful because of the excessive fatness of our meats. Part of the fat is trimmed off the meat by the butcher, part goes from our plates into the garbage-barrel, and part is eaten. Many eat more fat, both in meat and butter, than is necessary or healthful.

The agricultural production of this country to-day is onesided. Our animal and vegetable food-products, taken together. contain relatively too little of the flesh-forming ingredientsthose which make muscle and tendon-and too much of those which serve as fuel. From careless culture and insufficient manuring, or other reasons, our vegetable products, and especially the grasses and grains, have come to contain smaller proportions of protein, by 25 to 40 per cent., than the same products grown in Europe. Our great staple grain, corn (maize), is poor in protein at best. This helps to explain the relative fatness of our meats.

Our national dietary is likewise one-sided. Our food has too little protein and too much fat, starch, and sugar. Statistics show that the quantities of fat in European dietaries range from 1 to 5 ounces per day, while in the American the range is from 4 to 16 ounces. In the daily food of professional men in Germany, who were well nourished, the quantity of fat was from 3 to 41⁄2 ounces, while among Americans in similar con ditions of life it ranged from 5 to 71⁄2 ounces. The quantities of carbohydrates in the European dietaries were from 9 to 24 ounces, while in the corresponding American dietaries they were from 24 to 60 ounces.

We eat much more meat than is necessary to supplement our vegetable food, and our meat is much fatter than is neces. sary. The sugary and starchy foods, of which we consume an excess, make the fat still less necessary. By the present method of meat-production and use, a very considerable amount of the grass and grain of farms and grazing regions is wasted, and worse than wasted.

Agricultural reform will lead to the production of more and better food from less land. Dietary reform will result in the eating of less food per person, and food better adapted to the demands of health, work, and purse.

THE INSTALMENT BUSINESS. EDITORIAL.

Grenzboten, Leipzig, October,

MONG the questionable economic methods of the age, must be classed the instalment system, a system under which the would-be purchaser of an article, acquires possession of it under an arrangement to pay the required price by instalments at stated periods.

It may be admitted in favor of the system that it offers the poorer classes an opportunity of acquiring articles which they can employ profitably, but which are too expensive for them to secure by a cash payment. This applies especially to every class of industrial machine. But this advantage is attended with many drawbacks. In the first place the apparent facility of acquiring goods on this system tempts people to acquire unnecessary as well as necessary articles; and even in respect of articles of the first class, the conditions are generally such

as to render the acquisition a risky one for the purchaser. The evils of the system have excited wide-spread attention, and on all sides we have appeals to the legislature for remedy of its abuses.

We are by no means of opinion that the State has no other function than to leave economic abuses to adjust themselves, and to sit supinely by while the strong devour the weak in the struggle for existence. On the contrary we deem it a prime duty of the State to protect the weak against the strong. At the same time we are of opinion that exceptional legislation against such abuses should be resorted to only when there is no possibility of redress under the common law. And we are further of opinion that a judicial condemnation of the abuses of the system would go far to remedy them. The judges, however, must be something more than mere machines for reaching decisions by turning over paragraphs. They must be men animated by a spirit of justice and bold enough to give effect to it.

The real question at issue is not whether the legislature should interfere in the matter or not, but whether the practice of the existing instalment houses is in harmony with existing ideas of justice. To answer this question it is necessary to know something of the character of the system.

As already said, the chief distinctive feature of the system is that the articles acquired under it are paid for by instalments. But that simply refers to the mode of carrying out the contract and says nothing as to the character of the transaction. There is nothing to be said against the payment of indebtedness by instalment. Houses are frequently paid for in this way and no one demurs. And why? Because the transaction conforms to the general conception of a sale.

The acquisition of articles under the instalment system does not conform to this general conception. The seller fixes the total of the insta'ments at a figure that will cover both the price of the article and the estimated business profit that might be made with the cash in hand for the periods over which the instalments spread. Such a transaction is not a sale on instalments, it partakes more of the nature of a purchase by means of a credit loan.

But the merchant does not want to sell his machines on credit, nor to make a loan. The would-be purchasers have no credit, and in many cases are not worthy of it. They may decline or be unable to pay after the first instalment or two, and the seller would have no redress. In this dilemma his lawyer advises him not to sell his machine or goods but to hire it out at a fixed rate on the understanding that after certain instalments shall have been paid the machine or goods shall become the property of the borrower. In case of failure to pay at due date the merchant takes possession of his rented goods.

There is no want of learned lawyers who have upheld the legitimacy of the transaction. We have here, they say, a concrete obligatory contract-the rent of the goods-with an abstract contract for final possession. This is an instructive example of how the abuse of language on that part of learned ignoramuses may lead to abuse of justice. Whoever, whether in fulfillment of an obligation, or voluntarily, gives his goods to another, enters into a legitimate transaction, but the transaction is not in part of a contract, abstract or concrete. An abstract transaction is impossible, and so is a transfer of property in the abstract. If the transfer of an article is to render it the property of the receiver, it must be through the concrete will of the transferrer to effect the transaction either in fulfillment of a legal obligation (as, for example, under a previous contract of sale), or simply as a present to gratify the other. But on what grounds is the transfer of the property effected under an instalment contract?

In the first place the contract specifies that the article is hired for a sum which is presumably its legitimate rental value. The lender claims ownership, until after the punctual payment

of a prescribed number of instalments. Does he, then, make a present of it to the hirer?

The fact is, the instalment man wants to dispose of his wares for money; that is, to sell them; but he will not give up his proprietary right in the articles disposed of until he shall have received payment in full, and to effect this he resorts to the fiction of a loan. Now it is simply impossible that a man can both sell and rent an article to the same person and in the same transaction; and such transactions, having an irremediable internal contradiction, are not legitimate contracts. A contract to sell a thing half, and rent it half, is void alike in nature and in law.

This condition of affairs renders it possible for the judge to dispose of grievances under this system with equity. The intention of the transaction is understood, and the judge, having ascertained the facts, has only to consider how much of the periodical instalments is fairly to be considered as rent and how much as part purchase money, or, in other words, how much has the article depreciated in value. For such amount the purchaser is liable, and this amount may be easily assessed by experts.

BABYLONIAN LIFE IN THE TIME OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

THE

A. H. SAYCE.

Deutsche Revue, Breslau, October.

THE oriental investigations of the last fifty years have extended our knowledge of civilized man and his works into a remote past, which, until recently, we regarded as buried in eternal oblivion. Legend has been replaced by historical truth, and in lieu of the speculations of the historians of a later age we are confronted with contemporary testimony.

With the daily life, and hopes, and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, the paintings on the walls of graves and temples have long rendered us familiar; and now old Babylon, too, has risen from the dead, and although the red bas-reliefs of the Chaldeans are lost to us, we have, nevertheless, a mass of written records of the time of Nebuchadnezzar, which convey more precise information than any paintings possibly could.

The excavations in Babylon undertaken in 1876 for the British Museum, led to the discovery of a great number of clay tablets, consisting for the most part of closed accounts and records of business transactions. The number of these tablets sent to Europe and America can hardly fall short of thirty thousand. Most of these tablets were dug from the mounds which rise above the plain on the former site of the cities of Babylon and Lippara. Lippara, the present Abu Habba, is the spot were once stood Bit-Uri, The House of Light" the Temple of the Sun-God, and it is here that the first discoveries were made by Hormuzd Rassam. In the last two years similar discoveries have been made in the ruins of Nissur, the ancient Nipur, and mainly through the American expedition. The treasures discovered here, however, belong rather to the first Babylonian dynasty, while the other discoveries are attributable to the time of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors.

For the elucidation of a number of these tablets we are indebted to the patience, the industry, and the keen insight of Dr. Strassmeier. The judicial expressions which occur in them were interpreted by Julius Oppert and F. C. Peyser. With the help of their translations and those of Pater Strassmeier's published tablets, and others in my own possession and elsewhere in public and private collections I will endeavor to picture, in outline, the life of a Babylonian citizen of the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

Babylon was at that period the centre of the world's commerce, the market for the sale and exchange of the wares of all nations, from China to the Mediterranean, from Africa to Kurdistan. Grecian soldiers served in the Babylonian army, and Tyre was exposed to a thirteen years' siege with the