In "Politicos," the author of New Social Teachings (Regan Paul,
Trench, and Co.), we recognise both moral earnestness, and a power of forcible and not ungraceful expression which accompanies that earnestness, and perhaps springs from it. His main purpose is to argue for the moralisation and the Christianisation of politics, while a secondary purpose is to demonstrate that ordinary economical processes are not, even from the high ethical standpoint, immoral. Two quotations we may give, as exhibiting both the special and the general purpose of "Politicos." In the first place, he says that "competition tends towards ' just price,' that is, towards equality in exchange; that this tendency is retarded by various counteracting forces ; that such forces may be checked, if not cancelled ; and that such progress is actually being achieved." In the second place, "Politicos" argues—and this argument is a rather fair specimen of his somewhat peculiar style of reasoning—that, while the official State Church is only such by courtesy, a real establishment exists ; for a community exists as a State in virtue only of a principle which is also the constitutive principle of Christianity, it only exists in order to realise Christian principle. Thus every State, no far as it is truly a State, is a Christian State. It has not only recognised, established, and endowed Christianity; it only exists for Christian ends." Yet " Politions " writes as if he were a novice—or, we should rather say, a mere student—in politics, who ban a good deal to learn, and perhaps even more to digest. What he has to say is suggestive, precisely as anything written by a youth of promise is suggestive.
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