We have to notice two new volumes of the series
"The English Citizen." (Macmillan and Co.) The State in its Relation to Trade, by T. H. Ferrer, touches on one of the most difficult questions of modern life. Though the volume is, in the main, explanatory and descriptive, it sometimes becomes polemical. Mr. Farrer speaks of the late Pro. fessor Stanley Jevons' work on the "Relations of State to Labour," and finds himself "more averse to central State interference" than he was. Nevertheless, after describing the various modes in which the State interferes with trade—and it is astonishing to see their multiplicity, when they are thus enumerated—he comes to a general conclusion that " the chief feature of the system is as much individual freedom as is consistent with the welfare of an organised society." This does not prevent him from criticising the system in various details; and this criticism seems, on the whole, judicious. At the same time, we take leave to differ from what he says about literary -copyright. Mr. Ferrer was the inventor, we suppose, of a proposed stipulation in the negotiations for international copyright between this country and America which met with an unanimous disapproval from authors and publishers. His main article of faith in this matter is "cheap books," but he fails to take into account the extraordinary un- willingness of the British public to buy books, however cheap. Books are always the smallest item in the average Englishman's expenditure, and the first retrenched.—Local Government, by M. D. Chalmers, is a lucid statement of a system which almost incredible complica- 'Lions have made obscure. Mr. Chalmers gives some alarming figures about local expenditure, which has increased in the last twelve years from £29,000,000 to £50,000,000. This is, indeed, calculated to cause anxiety, if it be true that the total rateable value of the property on which this burden is imposed is not more than £133,000,000, on which there is, as Mr. Chalmers reminds us, a first charge of £4,000,000 for tithes. This gives nearly 40 per cent., or .eight shillings in the pound. Can this be true P One has heard of rates approaching this sum, but the cases are rare.
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