Capital, Labour, and Trade, and the Outlook. Plain Papers by
Margaret Benson. (S.P.C.K.)—Miss Benson writes some admirable, sensible papers, exposing a number of fallacies which have a kind of perennial existence—as, e.g., that extravagance is "good for trade "—stating in plain language various useful truths and prin- ciple and explaining various operations of commerce. She has plenti of common-sense, and, when it is wanted, of humour,— witness " Moses Muddlehead's Market." She breaks, we are glad to see, a lance to good purpose on behalf of the much-abused because much-misquoted Church Catechism. "To do my duty in that state of life into which it shall please God to call me," is an aspiration which does not hinder any desire to rise in the wcrld. "The Aristocracy of Labour" is a particularly excellent paper. "Should not our whole endeavour be, not to check the advance of the • Aristocracy of Labour,' but to extend the aristocracy until it includes the whole Demos ?" The next chapter indicates some of the means, not less important because they may seem trivial, by waich this may be done. We are glad to find the S.P.C.K. pub- lishing a volume of this kind. Its action is excellently vindicated by the last chapter, "An Abiding City." The problem of recon- ciling the Christian ideal that we are "strangers and pilgrims," with the undoubted truth contained in Sallust's words that lovers of plea.su-e pass carelessly through life (veluti perigrinantes), is well worth an effort to solve.
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