SOME .PAPERS IN THE MAGAZINES.
TUE most readable, as well as the best, paper in the a:ntent- porary is Colonel' Osborn's, upon the present policy in Afghani- Stan, an unhesitating and most forcible denunciation. Colonel Osborn believes the war of last year to have been a wanton aggression, intended originally as the beginning of a much larger scheme of conquest; ridicules the " scientific frontier," and declares that there is but one reasonable course to pursue, —namely, to retire within our own boundary. He puts in a strong light one of the most formidable, though least noticed of all the difficulties in the way of annexation,—Where is the garrison to come from ? Colonel Osborn believes that, at all events until roads had been made in Afghanistan, the garrison would employ 40,000 English soldiers,--that is, of course, if we are to defend the new provinces against Russia :— " But tho English part of our Afghanistan garrison does not pre- sent so insuperable a difficulty us the native. It would not be safe, at least for many years, to organise our native garrison from the Afghans themselves. The regiments would have to be recruited in India specially for this service--but out of what races ? The natives of the southern pads of India have not the physique capable of enduring the severities of an Afghanistan winter. The Sikhs or Hindoos of Upper India would certainly not enlist in a service which carried them so fur from their homes, into the midst of an alien people and an alien faith. The only recruits we should obtain in large numbers would be Muhammadans. The danger, then, is obvi- ous. In India, the fierce fanaticism of the Moslem creed is mitigated by its contact with the milder tenets of llindeohnn ; but remove an Indian Moslem to Afghanistan, and he would very soon become in- spired by the religious zeal of his co-religionists around him. We should he exposed to the risk, perpetually, of our native garrison eombinhig with the people of the country to expel the Infidel intruders from the land, and restore the supremacy of the Prophet."
The article, though strongly worded, gives the results of great experience and study, and should be carefully weighed. So should the remarkable paper on " Contemporary Life and Thought in Turkey," by " An Eastern Statesman," a paper full of knowledge as well as thought, and suggesting far more than it says; witness this most instructive passage. After de- scribing the fall of Khaireddin Pasha, and the additional influ- ence acquired by the Ulema, the writer says :—" It may be well to note that Sir A. H. Layard and Khaireddin Pasha have both attempted to control the Turkish Government by their per- sonal influence over the Sultan, and have both been defeated by the stronger influence of Palace intrigue. There are, no doubt, certain advantages in maintaining intimate personal re- lations with an absolute sovereign, but, in fact, no sovereign is so absolute that ho cannot be to a great extent controlled by his Ministers ; and the Ambassador who is intimate with the Sultan, and seeks to control his actions, is certain to excite the jealousy and opposition of the Ministers and the Palace. Even with the Sultan himself, he is obliged. to assume a very different tone from that which he would use in dealing with a Minister. He may smile, but he cannot frown ; he may suggest, but he cannot threaten ; he may persuade, but he cannot dictate ; he may secure a promise, but he cannot exact its fulfilment. In the present case, he has certainly failed to keep his own protege in office, and, what is more important, he has failed to secure any modifications iu the system of government." " Critical Idealism in France " is an effort to describe the reac- tion growing in France against Materialism, and like Professor Mivart's account of "The Forms and Colours of Living Crea- tures," is a little too much iu the nature of what used to be called a " monograph,"---that is, contains a little too much condensed thought or information, for a magazine. Pro- fessor Mivart's article in particular will hardly be intel- ligible to the uninformed reader, • a defect which, we think, is fatal, when the object is to popularise thought. It may be denied that this is the object of such papers, and the denial may be accepted, but it is certainly the object of monthly magazines. In truth, this mouth the papers in the Content- perary are all a little too good. They lack the quality of read- ableness. It takes too much out of the ordinary reader to study Mr. Mivart, and " The Supreme God in the Indo-European Mythology," and " The Myths of the Sea and the River of Death," and " The Moral Limits of Beneficial Commerce," all at once ; and besides these, there are only the Indian and Turkish articles—both, as we have said, very good—and MatthoW Browne's really fresh criticism of that well-worn book, "Ma,evey Napier's Correspondence." As we read the paper and the book, the incessant thought in our own minds is,—what patience Napier must have had to bear this iucessaut criticism from his contributors upon each other and himself ! Or did he, perchance, defend himself in the only sufficient way, by leaving some of the sermons addressed to him unread The Fortnightly is more human. Mr. Morley might, perhaps,
leave his critics alone, or answer them in some less conspicuous.
place ; and we weary, be it said under the breath, of the London School Board; but Mr: Froude's view of what ought to be done with South Africa is interesting, even if one is unable quite to understand it, which is our case,—that is to 'say, we do•not see why, if South Africa outside the Cape Colony is to be governed like India, we should discuss any scheme of confederation; and Air. Shaw Lefevre's paper on " The Channel Islands " is a most important contribution to the laud question. The Channel' Islands are, we believe, the only British possessions outside India wherein the devolution of land is settled by law, and can- not be affected by bequest, and where, therefore, the tendency is to perpetual subdivision. The islands are, therefore, in the main held by cultivating peasants, the average holding being about eight acres ; the production is enormous, the population is thoroughly well housed, and thick as the people iitand—say„ three times as thick as in the Isle of Wight—there is a widely diffused prosperity and content. Mr. Lefevre says :-
" Everything tends to show that the aggregate wealth of the popu- lation is very great. The imports and exports are very large, in pro- portion to the population. In Guernsey, the, population of which does not exceed that of an average small county town in England, it has been found possible to raise very large loans for public works. The harbour of St. Peter's Port alone cost mere than i.200,000, which was wholly raised on loan in the island ; the savings-banks show deposits three times more than the relative amount for England. What, then, is the cause of this general prosperity, of this widely diffused wealth, and of the universal industry and thrift, which is so, remarkable ? Is it clue, as' the island thinkers believe, to their land. laws, which discourage the aggregation of property, and favour its distribution among the members of a family, and to the fact that the island people have never permitted the introduction of the English land-laws, which they believe to have an opposite tendency P
Mr. Horace White's paper on "Parliamentary Government in America" is a solidly reasoned piece of work, but he avoids the main point of all,—namely, that the main body of the peoPle. have a right, if the democratic theory is true, to the direct con- trol of their Government. He upholds democracy, yet upholds also the American Constitutional system, which almost para lyses democracy, and this because it paralyses it. It is, of course, a grave argument in favour of any Constitution that the people subjected to it, after a hundred years' trial, still like it, but it is no proof that another system would' not be still. better. As far as we understand American history, the judg-
ment of the people, except, perhaps, on foreign politics, is sounder than the judgment of their three sets of representatives, a reason of a strong ]cind for giving the former more power. The truereasou, however, is that democracy once granted, its right to rapid and
continuous action is granted also; and this, which is granted, in theory at all events, by the Parliamentary system, is denied in practice as well as theory by the Presidential. Is net Mr. Wilke, by the way, a little unjust to the French Constitution ? tie thinks it a mixture of both systems, but it is almost purely Parlia- mentary, the two Houses being both elected by universal sat- frage, and the President deprived of veto. If the Govern- ment could dissolve at will, it would be • Parliamentary. Mr. E. Dicey has an interesting account of Scialoja, the Nea- politan economist and financier, who seems to have fallen short of being a really great man chiefly from a deficiency of hardness iu his character, not a usual deficiency in an economist ; and we, at all events, have read with plea- sure Mr. W. P. Courtney's careful argument that no com- plete catalogue even of English literature can be published at a reasonable expense ; and his proposal that the guardians of the British Museum should execute more manageable tasks, the liret being a handbook to their treasures, or subject-catalogue. The paper is full of information.
The " star " paper in the Nineteenth Cent-nry is Mr. A. Forbes's, on " Flogging in the Army." He defends it ardently, says the throat of.a flogging made him a good soldier, and declares bluffly that the British soldier, of all soldiers, most needs flogging. It does not seem to strike Mr. Forbes that flogging may be one reason why the iespectable British citizen does not enter the Army—indeed, he denies that anybody thinks of the liability— and he forgets that the Army never was so bad as in Spain, When flogging was administered as freely as on board-ship. He asks why one form of punishment should bedevil a man more than another, and might just as well ask why one insult should hurt him more than another P—the answer in both cases being, that men feel things usually as social opinion expects them to feel them, in obedience to certain habitudes, and not in obedience to reason at all. Suppose at Eton severe kicking were substituted for the birch. Mr. Forbes's article, however, besides its natural interest, has the great merit that he says outright what he has to say, and does not take refuge in phrases. He thinks, if young soldiers drink as they did at Durban, that they roust be flogged till they leave off drink- ing, whatever the effect upon the men themselves. By the way, Mr. Forbes, like most advocates of the lash, quotes the private soldier's opinion in its favour. Is he prepared to say that the opinion of the least educated and self4estrained por- tion of the Army is in all cases, or in any other case, a safe guide ? Are classes so violently different, that soldiers need a punishment which could not be inflicted on an officer, who, nevertheless, is liable to every other P Dr. Hillebrand's enter- taitfing letters on " Modern England " we have noticed else- where ; and we may take another opportunity of commenting on Mr. Fawcett's "New Departure in Indian Finance," his main thesis being that economy, not extravagance, promotes efficiency; and most, readers will study Miss Bevingtou's answer to Mr. Mallock, and Mr. • Schiitz-Wilson's summary of the evidence against Lucretia Borgia. The case against the theological basis of morality has rarely been stated with more fearlessness than in the former, or, we may add, with more rooted disbelief in any governing motive other than self-interest. Miss Bcvington's view is obviously that men will always call that vice which annoys them, and that virtue which bene- fits them ; and will do so just the same, whether religion is believed or not :—" When a man, moreover, receives the benefit of such struggle without himself encountering its difficulty—in other words, receives his own good-fortune as the result of his neighbour's struggle—not the death, burial, and oblivion of a thousand creeds will avail to hinder the instinctively special force of his admiration. To ask why he should admire in .another, and so come to aim at for himself, this kind of conduct, is about as much or as little relevant as to ask wily he should Prefer straight limbs, intelligence, or fine weather, to deformity, or bad seasons. In one case, as in the other, man can- not but approve that of which he anti his ancestors have, con- sciously or unconsciously, reaped the benefits, though the basis of his appreciation be in one case physical, in another :esthetic, in another intellectual, and in a fourth moral or social." Miss Bevington believes that the b'elief in immortality is a mere re- sult of the intense wish for it, and conscience a developed func- tion of the mind,—developed, like other functions, by the need for it :—" Conscience' has taken millenniums to develope, and it has developed in obedience to a need, not a creed—sprung out of the fundamental demands of progressive existence, rather than from the comparatively recent demands of theological aspiration. The hope of heaven may be doomed to extinction, but not the will to live upon earth, and until the mass of man- kind is in the mood for suicide, there will continue to be a right and wrong road for men to walk in.>,
The argument is too grave for a brief notice like this, but we wonder if Miss Beviug- -ton denies that in this world the man with a good digestion and a bad heart is often the happiest and most successful P As Mr. .Schfitz-Wilson has shown, a few pages after, Pope Alex- ander VT., the most infamous of mankind; was an exceptionally happy man, and the whole history of the Renaissance shows that men withont conscience can enjoy the utmost happiness and fullness of life. Social affection is all very well, but if man is not to live again, the ideal for him will be to /mike life plea- sant for himself, whatever becomes of the millions after him. Their social affection will not attract him, any more than the desire of fame attracts the majority of mankind.
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