16 MAY 1868, Page 18

The Social Gospel. By R. J. Michael. (Trfibner.)—This is the

-" first English edition" of a portentous work, and we fear that, in the present state of human intelligence, it is also likely to be the last. So far as we understand Mr. Michael, all our existing laws, our whole :system of life, government, and property must be altered at his fiat. We are to elect a sovereign by universal suffrage for life or for ten Sears. We are to mortgage all our property to the State, and to pay a tax (in addition ?) of three-fourths of our property. The State is to create a new capital in bank notes, which it is to lend to the present proprietors but future mortgagors of property, and with which it is to pay off the National Dobt in ten years. It is also to pay a yearly salary to 20,000 physicians, 20,000 lawyers, 40,000 schoolmasters and mistresses, 20,000 -veterinary doctors, 20,000 clergymen, and 10,000 authors and authoresses, -all of whom are to devote themselves to the public service of the poorer -classes. The pay of the Army and Navy is to be doubled, and a holy war is to be begun in order to give Greece and Turkey to England, the -German duchies and Tripoli to Prussia, Belgium, Holland, the left bank -of the Rhine, and Egypt, to France, and Morocco to Spain. Mr. Michael has brooded over these ideas " since his tender childhood," and their _simplicity bears the strongest marks of that confiding age.