such expansion could no longer be resisted. By that time, however, the promagistrate had become so far familiar to the Roman mind that the use of the promagistracy as a regular part of the machinery of government was possible. This device of substituting the promagistrate for the magistrate made possible another period of expansion, and when this, too, had been carried to the limit the senate again sought by all means to avoid a forward policy. When, however, a new policy of imperialism was forced upon the state the constitutional problem could be met only by means fatal, in no long time, to the existence of the republic. So long as the crude and complicated municipal institutions of Rome could, in some sort, be adjusted to meet the crying needs of the day the republic could continue; when such adjustment had become impossible, or, at any rate, too difficult for the statesmen of the time, then, in spite of the protests of idealists and the daggers of patriots, it had to cease and another system took its place.

The irony of the situation lay in the fact that the machine had become inadequate to the needs of the empire that it was forced to govern. After the conquests of Pompey in the East and of Caesar in Gaul there were at least 14 provinces to be provided for and only 10 promagistrates. Yet any attempt to increase the number of governors available must necessitate an extensive readjustment of the whole machine of government. To any such readjustment the nobility were bitterly opposed. From this it followed that the republic, if saved at all, would have to be saved in despite of the opposition of the republicans. For a time the senate might get around the difficulties of its position by virtue of the fact that the people had over its head intrusted several provinces to one governor; but this was a device which if persisted in was fatal, and yet there was no way back to a normal system except by the intervention of a second Sulla. But Caesar was not a Sulla and the machine stopped forever.

VII. CERTAIN EARLY REACTIONS AGAINST LAISSEZ-FAIRE.

By WALTER P. HALL,

Assistant Professor of History in Princeton University.

CERTAIN EARLY REACTIONS AGAINST LAISSEZ-FAIRE.

By WALTER P. HALL.

To laissez-faire, the predominant social and economic philosophy of nineteenth-century England, the historian has already given the glory and the honors that are the spoils of victory. But laissezfaire is now thoroughly discredited, and he who would comprehend the causes of its overthrow and understand the origin of those theories of social welfare that now are triumphant, must know the story of the early fight against it, which, apparently so hopeless, almost fatuous in the beginning, ended in the complete route of laissez-faire. And great has been the overthrow, for with the possible exception of apocalyptic dogmas born of defeat and despair in distant Mesopotamia, no human theory has ever wrought in man such deep conviction. Under its hypnotic influence the nation long lay spellbound; its tenets met with widespread approbation; its clear-cut creeds and rigid syllogisms, as iron-bracing and non-human as the steam engine, its concomitant, seemed irrefutable, as firmly founded as Newton's law of gravitation.

To those whom it enthralled-and it can not be disputed that among them were the ablest men of nineteenth-century England—it was the very guide and beacon light for all humanity. From Adam Smith, Ricardo, Huskisson, through Cobden, Mill, and Bright, to Herbert Spencer and our own late Prof. Sumner, this new philosophy was held to have its rootage fast, impregnable, in what were deemed the laws of human nature. It advocated thought in terms of individualism, conceived of progress as forever linked with competition, applied in later days Darwinian theories quite unmodified to human life, and argued that society must be freed completely from governmental efforts to control, and direct its destiny.

On the other hand, they who feared this thing and hated it knew laissez-faire to be a nightmare that befogged clear reason, benumbed all charity. The steam engine had brought great wealth to England. Power increased a thousandfold, production grew apace, but the few reaped the profits. The doctrine seemed uncouth, bereft of reason, that would necessitate more toil, and more, and more, until man died.

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