more con

Act would be amended. As it was already * formed to reason, and true neutrality, and "eternal justice," no change was thought necessary till the British Act had been improved. In 1867, a commission appointed by Lord Derby's administration, recommended that the dispatching of an armed vessel, with knowledge that she would be employed for hostile purposes, and building her, "after being armed either within or beyond her Majesty's Dominions," should be embraced within the prohibitions of the Act. This was the American principle of just half a century before, but till then not adopted, though prolonged and costly experience made it urgent. We do not here cite a Bill offered in Congress, in the exasperated period of the Rebellion, changing our legislation to accord with English practice, which passed the House of Representatives at Washington, but was killed, as might have been predicted, in the Senate, though Mr. Bernard offsets this against the better, but equally futile, English amendments,because it forms no part of the real history of the course of opinion. It was but an evidence of the American sense of wrong. Mr. Bernard Mr. Bernard says that it is an open question whether some new understanding is not required by recent experience among maritime nations, and whether it is not just and expedient for all nations that neutral fitting out of cruisers should be prohibited. He does not favor it, however, and suggests difficulties. Pres. Woolsey says some change for the future is demanded, (N. Amer. Rev., 1870,) "either an alteration in English law, or some improvement in, or modification of, the law of nations." He commends the report of the English Commissioners of 1867, and Dr. Phillimore's suggestions touching prohibition of exports of war supplies. These things show the tendency of international law. The American idea, rendered pressing by American wrongs, is now made the basis

Bernard says the two were "substantially identical on this head," -plainly incorrect, however deserving he is of Dr. W.'s commendations for general correctness.

† Also a provision for detaining on a warrant, issued for reasonable or probable cause, a suspicious vessel.

of settlement between the two great Anglo-Saxon Powers.* Whether this would have come to pass if England had not also wronged and vexed United Germany, since, as she did United America ten years ago, and thus placed two out of the three greatest of the Great Powers in a wounded, and sensitive condition, we will not say. But we will say that the result is a notable advance in the ethical and mutual relations of the Christian nations. It is a triumph of right reason over pride, of principle over love of gain, of right over wrong, of justice over selfishness, of the spirit of peace over the most dangerous incentives to war. It amply vindicates if that were now needed Mr. Sumner's memorable overthrow of the JohnsonClarendon Convention. It makes good his becoming protestation that he maintained our righteous "Claims against England" in the interests of equity and international harmony. Among the many asseverations of British rulers that the Crown would never assent to the reference of the matters in dispute, was one of Lord Stanley's, (letter to Mr. Ford, Nov. 16, 1867,) that the "only point which her Majesty's Government can consent to refer, is the question of the moral responsibility of Her Majesty's Government," etc., etc., etc.; and that its failure, even in "legal" neutral" duties and relations," could be submitted to the decision of an arbiter only as it "involved a moral responsibility on the part of the British Government to make good losses of American citizens, caused by the Alabama and other vessels of the same class." In these four intervening years, England has largely increased her "moral responsibility" in that kind! and now accepts the oft-rejected arbitration proposed through Mr. Adams, eight years since, with instructions to her Commissioners that her moral responsibility is to be treated as if it had been a legal one, (cum protest that it was not!) and that this sort of quasilegal responsibility is to be bona fide and actually legal in future! Such is the NEW DEPARTURE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW.

*The opinion of the "Nation" newspaper, May 18, on the "not new doctrines, is too strong.

ARTICLE II.

DARWINISM.*

Let us pass on to notice other more positive objections to Darwin's theory-objections which he states fairly, and with great candor acknowledges their force. Yet he does not shrink from encountering the difficulties lying in his path. In his efforts to overcome them, he brings to his aid a vast array of facts and analogies, gathered from the whole range of organized beings, from the earliest traces of organic forms in the geological strata, to the swarming races which occupy the earth at the present time.

As already stated, Darwin does not meddle with the question of the origin of life on the earth. Supposing life to have already begun, far back in the past, in a few simple forms, he assumes for his theory the responsibility of accounting for all the forms and phenomena of life which have since come to light. He admits that one single authentic fact, which is in conflict with his theory, or does not admit of a plausible explanation in accordance with it, is fatal to its acceptance.

One of the difficult facts, requiring explanation, consists in the extreme complication and high perfection of some of the organs of living beings, such complication and perfection as seemingly to surpass the power of gradual variation, natural selection, and hereditary propagation, to elaborate and perfect them. The wing of the bat is one of the organs which presents this difficulty. The bat, in all other parts of its organization, is allied to the mole, shrew, and other small insecteating animals. Hence, according to the theory of natural selection, its wing must have been developed from the paw of some shrew-like congener. How this could be done is the problem to be solved by the theory. Darwin encounters this difficulty by adducing a few cases, which he regards as repre

* Concluded from May No.

senting the progressive stages of transition from naked paws to the perfected wing. For illustration, take the habit of leaping from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, so common with squirrels and monkeys. It is supposable, according to Darwin, that by some fortunate variation, individuals of these races should be born with a slightly developed fold of skin along the sides, between the anterior and posterior extremities. This, in their usual outspread manner of making their passage through the air, would buoy them up and give them a decided advantage over others in the habit of leaping. Natural selection, progressive variation, and the law of inheritance, according to the theory, would increase and perpetuate this peculiarity, until any supposable degree of perfection in the organ might be reached. The parachutes of the flying squirrel and of the flying lemur are spoken of as marking possible gradations in this line of development.

After giving all due weight to the above explanation, it seems to me that an unbiased judgment must pronounce it unsatisfactory. It gives us no instances of even probable transition forms between the paw and the wing; which forms ought to exist, if such changes have taken place in the past and are going on in the present. Then the anatomy of the bat's wing reveals a seeming skillfulness of adaptation, which quite lifts it out of the realm of chance and change, over which natural selection and the law of inheritance are supposed to reign.

The eye is another organ which receives attention in this connection. This difficulty is passed over--a very confident opponent would say, slurred over-by referring to supposed stages of development of this organ, from the eyeless inhabitants of caves and the rudimentary eye of the mole, to the most perfect state of the organ in the higher animals. Is it uncandid to say that this looks more like a subterfuge than an explanation? Besides, it ignores the fact that there is, in all complicated organs, more which requires explanation than their simple constituent and structural composition and form as mere material masses. But this will come up for more extended notice further on.

As may have been already anticipated, another difficulty in the way of the theory arises from the wonderful instincts of animals-instincts correlated to the degree of perfection of the organization, and often surpassing in results the highest wisdom and art of man. If the existing forms of life have been developed, by variation, natural selection, and inheritance, from lower and simpler forms, then new instincts must have come in to adjust the relations of the improved being to its higher sphere of life; and the new instincts must accurately correspond with the improved state of the organization.

The author meets this difficulty by first setting forth an analogy, or, as he would have us think, an identity between habit and instinct, and then adduces cases of instincts varying with the external conditions of existence- such variations being supposed to be steps in the progress of acquiring new instincts. Some of the instances of variable instincts adduced by the author are that of woodpeckers, which seek their food in the ground; that of land animals, inhabiting water coasts, seeking their food in the water, while usually living exclusively on the land, and other analogous cases. It is safe to leave the reader to judge how far such arguments go in explaining the cell-building instincts of the bee, the domestic economy of the hive, and the analogous facts as regards the internal polity of families of ants.

One of the most formidable obstacles in the way of the acceptance of Darwin's theory, is the existence of the neuter class of insects among ants and bees. As the neutral sex imposes sterility, this form of variation, with its wonderful development of the instincts of industry and skill, can not have been propagated by direct inheritance. The solution of this difficulty, offered by Darwin, does not seem quite satisfactory. It makes the supposition that certain parent bees or ants produce, as an occasional variation, a proportion of sterile offspring, which greatly surpass the parents in skillful industry for the benefit of the community. It supposes that the communities in which this variation occurs thereby become prosperous, and thus gain an advantage, in the struggle for existence,