man _in
faece Romuli_--as Sir Henry Maine insists on our putting it in that
polite way--was tried and condemned not many years ago for publishing
a certain pamphlet which made a limitation of population the very
starting-point of social reform. It is not necessary to pronounce an
opinion on the particular counsels of the pamphlet, but the motives
which prompted its circulation (motives admitted to be respectable by
the Chief-Justice who tried the case), and the extraordinary reception
of the pamphlet by the serious portion of the workmen of the towns,
would make a careful writer think twice before feeling sure that
popular bodies will never listen to the truth about population. No
doubt, as Sir Henry Maine says in the same place, certain classes now
resist schemes for relieving distress by emigration. But there is a
pretty obvious reason for that. That reason is not mere aversion
to face the common sense of the relations between population and
subsistence, but a growing suspicion--as to the reasonableness of
which, again, I give no opinion--that emigration is made into an easy
and slovenly substitute for a scientific reform in our system of
holding and using land. In the case of Ireland, other political
considerations must be added.

Democracy will be against science, we admit, in one contingency: if
it loses the battle with the Ultramontane Church. The worst enemy
of science is also the bitterest enemy of democracy, _c'est le
clericalisme_. The interests of science and the interests of democracy
are one. Let us take a case. Suppose that popular Government in France
were to succumb, a military or any other more popular Government would
be forced to lean on Ultramontanes. Ultramontanes would gather the
spoils of democratic defeat. Sir Henry Maine is much too well informed
to think that a clerical triumph would be good for science, whatever
else it might be good for. Then are not propositions about democracy
being against science very idle and a little untrue? "Modern
politics," said a wise man (Pattison, _Sermons_, p. 191) "resolve
themselves into the struggle between knowledge and tradition."
Democracy is hardly on the side of tradition.

We have dwelt on these secondary matters, because they show that
the author hardly brings to the study of modern democracy the ripe
preparation of detail which he gave to ancient law. In the larger
field of his speculation, the value of his thought is seriously
impaired by the abse