of their nature, in compelling them to confront the great problems and to realise what it is that they hold most dear. One might too often be led to think, by the tone of its defenders, that the Christian religion was a kind of transcendental insurance company; that its object was merely to enable men to enjoy this temporal life without anxiety as to the eternal. But this is not so. The object of all true religion is not the tranquillity, but the life of the spirit; and our modern days have seen this life grow strong and vigorous in regions where it has received no conscious sustenance from an environing Power. It would be rash to turn aside from fellowship with such men because their language jars on orthodox tradition. Le blasphème des grands esprits,' as M. Renan has said in words that recall the deepest thoughts of Pascal

le blasphème des grands esprits est plus agréable à Dieu que la prière intéressée de l'homme vulgaire; car, bien que le blasphème réponde à une vue incomplète des choses, il renferme une part de protestation juste, tandis que l'égoisme ne contient aucune parcelle de vérité.

I must draw to a conclusion. Yet lest, amid criticism and controversy, I may seem to have rendered imperfectly the substantive character and lessons of a man, some of whose utterances may bear comparison, for depth and wisdom, with the wisest and deepest words of any living teacher, I must yet find room for two passages which represent him at his best. The first was written at a crisis of private sorrow and public contention, and spoke out, in answer to a swift emergency, the inward habit of his soul.

J'ai vu la mort (he said 7) de très-près. J'ai perdu le goût de ces jeux frivoles où l'on peut prendre plaisir quand on n'a pas encore souffert. Les soucis de pygmées, dans lesquels s'use la vie, n'ont plus beaucoup de sens pour moi. J'ai, au contraire, rapporté du seuil de l'infini une foi plus vive que jamais dans la réalité supérieure du monde idéal. C'est lui qui est, et le monde physique qui paraît être. Fort de cette conviction, j'attends l'avenir avec calme. La conscience de bien faire suffit à mon repos, Dieu m'ayant donné pour tout ce qui est étranger à ma vie morale une parfaite indifférence.

The last passage which I shall quote is one written in calmness, not in exaltation. It seems to me to contain thoughts as lofty, in language as clear and noble, as any meditation on these eternal things which our age has known.

Si la religion n'était que le fruit du calcul naïf par lequel l'homme veut retrouver au-delà de la tombe le fruit des placements vertueux qu'il a faits ici-bas, l'homme y serait surtout porté dans ses moments d'égoisme. Or, c'est dans ses meilleurs moments que l'homme est religieux, c'est quand il est bon qu'il veut que la vertu corresponde à un ordre éternel, c'est quand il contemple les choses d'une manière désintéressée qu'il trouve la mort révoltante et absurde. Disons donc hardiment

La Chaire d'Hébreu au Collège de France.
From L'Avenir Religieux des Sociétés Modernes.

que

la religion est un produit de l'homme normal, que l'homme est le plus dans le vrai quand il est le plus religieux et le plus assuré d'une destinée infinie; mais écartons toute confiance absolue dans les images qui servent à exprimer cette destinée, et croyons seulement que la réalité doit être fort supérieure à ce qu'il est permis au sentiment de désirer et à la fantaisie d'imaginer. On crut que la science allait diminuer le monde. En réalité elle l'a infiniment agrandi. La terre semblable à un disque, le soleil gros comme le Péloponèse, les étoiles roulant à quelques lieues de hauteur sur les rainures d'une voûte solide, un univers fermé, entouré de murailles, cintré comme un coffre, voilà le système du monde le plus splendide que l'on eût pu concevoir. . . . Croyons hardiment que le système du monde moral est de même supérieur à nos symboles. . . . Qui sait si la métaphysique et la théologie du passé ne seront pas à celles que le progrès de la spéculation révélera un jour ce que le cosmos d'Anaximène ou d'Indicopleustès est au cosmos de Laplace et de Humboldt?

And now, perhaps, enough indication has been given of the temper in which this subtlest of seekers after God approaches the mystery on whose skirts we dwell. The value of his reflections it must be left in great part for the succeeding age to determine. All that can be claimed for him,-that must be claimed now and ever by honest men for honest men,-is that disagreement should carry with it no detraction; that there should never be anything but honour paid to the search for truth.

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Things are what they are,' said Bishop Butler, and their consequences will be what they will be; why, then, should we wish to be deceived?' Eis olwvos äpioтos-the one best of omens is that we ourselves be brave and true. Light! though thou slay us in the light!' is the aspiration of all noble souls. Nor was it in vain that that prayer of Ajax was uttered beside Scamander's shore. The cloudveil was withdrawn at his bidding, and light was given indeed; but it was not destruction which it pleased Zeus to send for the sons of the Achæans, but entry into sacred Ilium, and a return to their immemorial home.

F. W. H. MYERS.

CONFISCATION AND COMPENSATION.

Ir is contended, with some show of reason, by the authors and advocates of the Irish Land Bill, that the measure cannot possibly create a precedent for legislation affecting landed property in England, and that English members may therefore regard it with platonic coolness. There is, however, one feature in the Bill which cannot be thus isolated in its effect. Whether the peculiar economic and social conditions prevailing in Ireland are, or are not, essentially different from those prevailing in England, and require, therefore, a different treatment, may be matter for argument, but there can be no pretence that any such differences justify the application of varying principles in dealing with legal rights annulled, invaded, or impaired by legislation. If Parliament, in the public interest, deems it necessary and right to confiscate' any man's property, whether it be in land or houses or Government stock, in England, in Scotland, or in Ireland, the principles upon which the claim of the owner to be compensated has to be considered cannot be subject to local and fluctuating conditions. Political economy has been banished from Ireland to Jupiter or Saturn,' but no such decree has yet gone forth against political morality; and heretofore the political morality accepted in theory and applied in practice by all English statesmen has included an admission, that when private rights, previously acknowledged and enforced by law, are interfered with by legislation, the State is bound to compensate the persons damnified by the change. If the Irish Land Bill departs from this sound principle, it is quite certain that the mischievous effect of the precedent will not hereafter be limited to Ireland only.

The Irish Land Bill, as introduced and defended by the Government, contains no provisions for compensating the landlords who are called upon to surrender a portion of their legal rights. The explanations of Ministers on this point have hitherto, in Parliament at least, been ambiguous and contradictory. But Mr. Chamberlain in a speech delivered at Birmingham on the 7th of June-a speech extolled by some admirers of the Ministry as supplying a triumphant demonstration that the so-called Radical members of the Cabinet are

in truth the most moderate of men '-was extremely candid in his exposition of the ministerial views. His candour, indeed, must to some extent surprise his cautious colleague, the Attorney-General for Ireland, who has protested in the House of Commons against being ' entrapped' into explanatory statements by questions from the front Opposition bench with respect to the meaning of the language of certain provisions of the Bill. Mr. Chamberlain not only scoffs at the notion that the landlords have any claim to compensation, but arraigns the Opposition as equally guilty of obstruction with the Irish party,' because they have ventured to put forward that claim in committee. He said at Birmingham:

The Bill has also been delayed by the action of the Tories, who are striving by amendments and by discussions to force upon the Government provisions for the compensation of the landlords for what they call the confiscation of their property. I very much doubt whether these amendments are really suggested by Irish landlords, who, I believe, as a rule are anxious only for a reasonable settlement. I am inclined to think they are suggested by English landlords who are afraid of inconvenient precedents. But in any case I say that these amendments are unreasonable, and ought to be rejected. What have we to compensate the landlords of Ireland for? We do not propose to do anything above and beyond this: to make compulsory upon all landlords the practice which we are assured the majority of landlords, and certainly of good landlords, now adopt. Good landlords do not rack-rent their tenants; why should bad landlords be compensated for a legal right which they cannot equitably exercise? A good landlord will not forfeit the property or the improvements of his tenants, and he will not lightly evict from his holdingwhich, perhaps, is the only means of livelihood which the tenant has a man who, himself and his family, has remained, perhaps, longer on the ground even than the landlord has. Bad landlords have done this in some cases, and might do in many more; but I cannot conceive that they have any right to claim compensation for restriction and limitation of powers which they ought never to have been permitted to enjoy. In our English legislation there are numberless precedents in which legal rights have been found to be in conflict with public morality and public interest, and have been restricted and limited, and I am not aware of any such cases in which compensation has been given to those who have been thus treated.

This remarkable statement contains several startling propositions, but the most important is the assumption that when legal rights are abolished, no claim to compensation arises if it can be argued that those rights are inequitable.' It can be shown, I think, that the Bill interferes with and impairs rights which not even Mr. Chamberlain would pronounce inconsistent with equity, and I intend to give particular instances of hardship and loss of various degrees and kinds. But, waiving this point for the present, let us consider the scope of Mr. Chamberlain's principle. It involves not only confiscation, but penal confiscation; the verdict of guilty,' on the ground of which the sentence is passed, is brought in, not by any responsible

The Spectator writes on June 11: We ask confidently whether a more sincerely moderate and, in the best sense, Conservative speech than Mr. Chamberlain's on the subject of Ireland could by any possibility have been delivered by a Liberal minister?'

tribunal, but by the vague and shifting mass of political opinion dominant for the moment in the House of Commons. The impossibility of finding any basis for general agreement as to what is and what is not equitable requires no demonstration. What is regarded as 'equity' in relation to landed property by Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon may be deemed iniquitous by Mr. Gladstone, Sir Stafford Northcote, and possibly Mr. Chamberlain himself. The converse is equally true. The Irish agrarian agitators denounce as inequitable powers of which no English Liberal, however advanced his opinions, condemns the exercise. According to Mr. Chamberlain's strange doctrine, 'justice is to be measured by the length of the judge's foot,' and the judge in this case is to be the parliamentary majority for the time being.

It is almost humiliating to have to state formally the reasons against admitting Mr. Chamberlain's principle, which it is clear must apply to every other legislative change affecting any sort of property just as much as to the tenure of land in Ireland. But Mr. Chamberlain's position as a Cabinet Minister gives weight to his words, while the intentions of the Government are still obscure; for it is to be observed that the Prime Minister, though he has carefully wrapt up his meaning in a cloud of verbiage, appears inclined to take up a line of defence inconsistent with that bluntly avowed by the member for Birmingham. Mr. Forster, however, has more distinctly placed on record the alternative method of arguing against compensation. In the debate on the second reading, he said:

The right hon. and learned Member for the University spoke of compensation to the landlords, and I think I am not mistaken in supposing that that was the real meaning of his speech; he hoped that terms would be made for affording compensation to them by large State payments. Now, the state of things in Ireland is this-that equity gives one thing and statute law enforces another. The statute law has not admitted in many parts of Ireland the right of the tenant to his occupancy, and even in Ireland, where that right is admitted, it is not guarded against being invaded; whereas equity now demands that it should be so guarded. We have had cases very often in which we have had to change the law in order to carry out the principles of equity, and there have been cases sometimes in which large compensation has been given out of State funds. I, therefore, am not surprised to hear a claim made for compensation. But the English law in the matter depends upon whether damage can be proved, and my firm belief is that no damage can be proved; on the other hand, that if the landlord were compensated, you would compensate him for conferring on him a benefit.

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To which of these defences do the Ministry intend to adhere, when the question of compensation is raised? Will they contend with Mr. Chamberlain that the landlords have no claim to be compensated for the abolition or restriction of rights they ought never to have been permitted to enjoy,' or will they strive to show with Mr. Forster that no loss has resulted from the legislative intervention with those rights? Each line of defence is open to grave objection; and there