rs, to the exclusion of those who do not
belong to their associations. Logic has something, perhaps not much, to
do with political action, and it is almost inconceivable that a party
can go on for long holding these two contradictory opinions. Which of
them will be abandoned, the future only can tell.

The result of all this is a growing disinclination on the part of the
people to limit their responsibilities to their means of discharging
them, the creation of a proletariate which in search of maintenance
drifts along the line of least resistance, dependence on the government
dole. In the end too it must bring about the impoverishment of the
state, which is ever being called on to undertake new burdens; for the
individual, thus released from obligation to discharge, is still left
free to create responsibilities, for which it is now the business of the
State to make provision. Under such a system the ability to pay as well
as the number of the solvent citizens must continuously decline.

The proper reply to this legislation which we describe as predatory in
the sense that we describe the benevolent habits of Robin Hood as
predatory, cannot be made by the official opposition which was itself
the first to step on the down grade, and which only waits the chances of
party warfare to take its turn in providing _panem et circenses_ at the
charge of the public exchequer. In this way, progress is brought to a
standstill by the chronic unwillingness of the rate- and tax-payers
to find the money. A truer policy, based on the voluntary action of
citizens and capable of indefinite and continuous expansion, finds no
support among politicians, for all political parties seem to be held in
the grip of the moral and technical incompetence which M. Faguet has so
wittily described. The only reply to a government bent on such courses
is that which above has been imputed--perhaps without sufficient
justification--to the governments of the period 1832-1866; and that
reply democracy, as at present advised, will allow no political party to
make.

There does not appear, therefore, to be much difference between the
situation here and in France, and it is very interesting to notice how
in various details there is a very close parallelism between events in
this country and those which M. Faguet has described. The position of
our Lord Chancellor, who has been bitterly attacked by his own party, in
respect of his appointment of magistrates, is very