val till the country has another good harvest and her farmers have money to spend.

The cable despatches from London have been unblushingly partisan, in favor of the English ministry, but the report of Lord Beaconsfield's speech on the present and future of English and American agriculture, really suggests that somebody has been at the pains to caricature that eminent statesman. According to this great authority, it is to Canada that we are to look for the great achievements of the future; it is she who possesses unlimited resources, and whose rich lands are being rapidly taken up by the disappointed land-owners, who are all selling out in our Western States. Poor Canada, with her business interests prostrated, her reciprocityforcing tariff a failure, and her population steadily drifting Southward across her border, may well wonder who has been cramming his Lordships with stories worthy of a Münchausen.

While English landlords are making temporary reductions in rents to meet the presure of hard times on the farmers, attention is very properly called to the fact that in every other country of Europe, including Scotland, such reductions are a matter of right and not of grace. Contracts and leases are construed as implying that whenever the yield of the land is exceptionally low, the rent is either proportionally abated, or in extreme cases remitted entirely. The difference arises from the acceptance elsewhere of those maxims of Civil Law, which England has so jealously excluded from her jurisprudence. The Roman landlord was required to make such reductions, and the tradition has passed from Rome to the rest of Europe.

THE call issued by the highest authorities in certain religious bodies to observe a day of fasting and humiliation, in order that the judgments inflicted on the British Islands by the bad weather may be removed, has awakened the old discussion as to the religious interpretation of such social disasters. We think that the matter might be very greatly simplified by a stricter attention to words. So long, however, as people will insist on using the word judgment in every sense but the right one, there is no possibility of coming to any understanding.

We think that even an atheist will admit that there come upon

every community times of special severity and strain, when the quality of its moral and its economic policy is sorely tested. And, even without asserting that there is "an intelligence at the heart of things," it is possible to speak of these times as days of judgment, using that word in its own, proper sense, and not confounding it with condemnation, or punishment. To the theist, however, such times must have a special significance, as designed to bring to light the nation's weak places, to show the people their sins against social law, and to give them the opportunity of national amendment. Such a judgment of a nation is furnished by a time of continued tempest, but it stands in strict relation to the sort of suffering which results. If the community has followed a policy which produces deep poverty alongside great wealth, so that large masses of the people suffer through having nothing to fall back upon, then manifestly the judgment has resulted in condemnation. Nor is the punishment confined to the direct sufferers; it extends to the whole nation, through the growth of dangerous classes, the spread of dissatisfaction, the decrease in security for life and property, and ultimately the dissolution of society itself. And as the blunders in economic or any other policy which lead to such disasters, are traceable, in the last result, to some moral obliquity of vision, some short-sighted selfishnéss, this system is essentially a moral government exercised upon human society. But in the vague notion that any social sin may be requited by any kind of punishment, there is nothing religious or worthy of consideration.

It is not so difficult to see just what sort of judgment is exercised upon England by the present period of bad harvests. The greater part of the shock felt is due to the wrong and unnatural constitution of her whole economic structure, the disproportionate distribution of her wealth, and the neglected condition of her poor. A similar disaster in France or Belgium would be felt much less severely by the masses of the people, because their economic policy has been adjusted in the interests of the many; and the poorest class there would live for a long time "on their own fat."

The individual use of such adversities may be quite independent of the social effects. Human happiness is clearly not contemplated as the only end in the order of the world. The formation of human character, even through suffering and distress, is still more a

final end of things. And the national calamity has been foreseen and intended as a part of the discipline of each separate human life. Nor must we think of an infinite mind as looking upon the matter as a finite legislator would, and deciding on that course which is best for the greatest number of cases. On the contrary, the needs of each individual case must have been clearly foreseen, and the decision made with reference to what is absolutely best for it.

THE international politics of central Europe seem to have become somewhat entangled during the summer. The three great Emperors, whose good understanding was so manifest during the negotiation of the Berlin Treaty, are by no means so cordial in their relations; and all sorts of rumors as to the cause and the extent of the disagreement are afloat. It seems most clear that Russia and Germany are far from friendly, especially as the semiofficial papers of both countries are anything but amiable in their exchange of political courtesies. Exactly how Austria is concerned is not clear, but it looks as if she was bound closely to Germany's lead. Count Andrassy, who represented, if anything, the German friendship, has resigned, but he declares that this does not in the least indicate any change of policy or of opinion on the part of the Emperor. But as one man carries the politics of each country under his hat, there can be a good deal of disagreement, and even a full blown quarrel, before the public at largè learns anything of the fact and its reasons.

Andrassy's resignation, it seems, was due to the efforts of the Hungarian politicians to make his life a burden, in revenge for his annexation of Bosnia, and the consequent increase of the Slavonic element in the empire. The Slavs are already a majority of the Emperor's subjects, and if the Germans are wise they will some day raise them to the rank of a third division in the now doubleyolked state. A nominal annexation of the purely Slavic countries to Bohemia, and the equation of the Estates of that ancient Kingdom with those of Austria and Hungary, would put a stop to the frequent dead locks which arise under the present arrangement, by turning a vote of one to one into a vote of two to one, the one being Hungary. The result would be a gain to the cause of civilization; for whatever romantic interest may still cluster around

the Magyars, all their history shows then to be a race politically, socially and industrially inferior to either Teuton or Slav.

THE predictions we made that the elections this fall would be favorable to the Republicans, are already in part fulfilled. Few Republicans were inclined to count with confidence on California this year. The peculiar character of her politics, the four-cornered fight in which the rise of two new parties had involved the struggle, imparted a great uncertainty to the situation on the Pacific coast. It was, therefore, with some genuine surprise that we heard of the Republicans electing the Executive officers, a majority of the Legislature, and most, if not all, of the Congressmen. The Working-men's party carried San Francisco, though by a vote considerably less than a majority, electing the Rev. Mr. Kalloch Mayor, as might have been expected after the base attempt at his assassination, which for a few days lashed the city into fury. The fourth party, the Anti-monopolist or Honorable Bilks, seems to have been wiped out; and the politics of the state are in so far simplified.

The lesson of the California election is that the party which sees the farthest and is least carried away by the sudden drifts of public opinion, is the one which has in the long run the best chance of success. The Democrats, for years past, have been trying to get their mill turned by all sorts of political freshets, which have generally lasted for a night and then left the wheels dry. Every workingman's movement, greenback movement, and the like, has been coquetted with, and the support of the sober part of the community has been alienated in an equal degree. If they have any chance of success in this country it is in fighting their enemies on the two issues which furnish the very reason for their existence as a party-Local Self-government or State Rights, and Free Trade. At present they hardly dare to touch either, and certainly both are anything but popular.

THE Maine election shows what they may expect from alliances in the Greenback quarter. The Republicans have carried the state by almost a majority, and the Democrats have scored a bad third. It equally shows that the strength of the Greenback movement is

by no means broken. So far from losing ground in Maine, they have actually gained, and polled a larger vote than last year. It is the Democratic loss which has enabled the Republicans to gain. There is every reason to believe that the new party will perpetuate its existence and will form an important element in the political complications of the future. And if, as there are some indications, they come to adopt a more sober and practical platform, giving up all Fiat money vagaries, they may even succeed in modifying the fiscal policy of the nation. Indeed, they have had some influence already, for we owe it to them that the resumption of specie payments was not accompanied by the withdrawal and destruction of our national paper money. And if they would narrow down their contention to the single issue, whether our paper money should be the creation of the nation or of corporations, we should neither fear nor be surprised at their success. The plainest intellect can be brought to see that a circulating note is a debt due from the issuer to the public, on which he pays no interest. And we have never yet found any one attempt fairly to face the question, why should not such issues be made for the sole and direct benefit of the whole community rather than of private corporations. Our strongest resumptionist papers, The Tribunc unhappily excepted, rebuked Secretary Sherman when he loaned the nation's money to New York banks and asked no interest. But the same mischief is involved in allowing any corporation to issue bank-notes. It is allowing them to borrow from the public, without paying interest.

THE politics of New York state are in such a muddle that each party would despair of success, were it not that the embarrassments of the other suggest hope.

In the Republican party, Mr. Conkling has carried the nomination for Governor of Mr. A. B. Cornell, a man utterly distasteful to the less stalwart members of the party, and not at all likely to bring out the full Republican vote. For this false step, the administration is first of all to blame. It removed Mr. Cornell from the Collectorship of New York, not because he was a bad officer,he was confessedly a good one, but because he belonged to the wing of the party which had no sympathy with the specialities of Cabinet opinion, and because he ignored the absurd order which