CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Dublin Review for January, 1873. (Barns and Oates.)—This is- not a very lively number, but it contains an effective article on the Queen's Colleges in Ireland, showing how very low is the standard of literary education in those institutions, and a very clear and well defined paper on the relation between the duties of society to the agricul- tural labourer and the so-called "laws" of political economy. In relation to the latter, the only question remaining to be discussed is how much can be done effectively for the labourers without endangering their welfare as much by teaching them to rely on external help, as it is now endangered by leaving them in their present degraded condition. A second paper on "Irish Priests and Landlords" developes effectively the apology advanced in the last number for the priestly denunciations of landlord coercion, and tries to make out that, in relation at least to tenant-right and evictions, priestly coercion was impossible, since the conscience of every peasant was on the side of tenant-right.
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