the junction of the two offices of Governor and High Commissioner, perhaps in the person of a military man, was intelligible. Now this junction is almost unintelligible, and, speaking at Kimberley, November 1884, Sir Hercules Robinson himself made the best commentary of the inherent difficulties of the double office. He was reported to say: "The difficulties of a constitutional Governor are greatly increased by the office being held in conjunction with that of Her Majesty's High Commissioner for South Africa. In that capacity there are personal duties to be performed outside the Cape Colony which extend over the whole of South Africa. These duties are of an Imperial, as distinguished from a Colonial character; and their peculiarity is that while they exist to carry out a policy determined by the Imperial Government, they must be made to harmonize with those which exist to carry out a policy determined by the Parliament of the Cape. The task of reconciling the sometimes conflicting policies is often one of peculiar anxiety and difficulty, so much so that it has at times been suggested that the two offices should be separated; but the dual duties dovetail, as it were, into each other to such an extent as to render it almost indispensable that they should centre. In my capacity as Her Majesty's High Commissioner, I have had, ever since my arrival in South Africa, to attend to a constant succession of anxious duties, among which I may specify the Basuto Award, the Pretoria Convention, the resumption of Basutoland by the Imperial Government, the Convention of London, and the establishment of a Protectorate in Bechuanaland." These words were spoken more than five years ago, and if then there were strong reasons for separating the offices, there are tenfold stronger reasons at the present moment, and the reasons grow stronger every day.

The influence of Cape Town and of the Western Province of the Cape Colony upon the general policy of South Africa has been far from an unmixed good, the Dutch influences in the immediate neighborhood being too prominent. In political science the Vignerons of the Paarl and Stelbenbosch are distinctly backward. On more than one occasion they have proved to be protectionists in the smallest sense of the word, and regard their own industry of making bad wine and unwholesome

spirits as the best in the colony, to be protected at all hazards. Their customers are the unfortunate colored classes. Cape Town itself has never acted up to the reputation of being the metropolis of South Africa. The town is conspicuous for its sordid municipal spirit and petty haggling economy, visible in the management of its public institutions, especially the Botanical Gardens. Quite recently we had a telling exhibition of this sordid spirit, so contrary to the liberality which should be a civic virtue, in the animated discussions on the paltry sums of money to be devoted to the entertainment and reception of the new governor, Sir Henry Loch. Apparently the Cape Town press is powerless to reform the narrow and illiberal views of those whose fortune, or misfortune, it is to live within sight of Table Mountain. Nature has done a great deal for Table Bay, art little or nothing. This is the commonplace of every traveller who sets foot upon the quay.

It is true also that of all the prominent politicians who have appeared in the Cape Assemblies the majority have come from the cast, insomuch that it may almost be accepted as a truism that the wise men there have come from the east." It has been reserved for a writer in Blackwood to stir up public feeling in Cape Town itself on the leper question, and the liquor traffic in the vicinity of the metropolis has still to be dealt with by some trenchant pen. In the town itself sanitary science has made but slow and feeble progress, and there are no vital statistics to be relied upon. In fact, it is a speaking and most damning fact against the Cape Colony that there have been no census summaries since 1875 ! It is hoped that in 1891 Sir Henry Loch will use his utmost endeavors to procure a statement of the population, wealth, and industries, etc., of the Cape Colony, as they are the basis of all reasoning.

With regard to the industries of the country, it is a well-known fact that all the most paying of these have been developed in the enterprising divisions of the eastern province. The best herds and flocks of the country have always been found in the east; the Angora goat has been grown in the east; the ostrich industry was developed in the east, and an Albany farmer has generally been generations ahead of a Malmesbury agriculturist. The wine industry, which westerns might

have developed, they have frittered and wasted away. Generally speaking, they have been purveyors of bad wine and unwholesome spirits to degraded natives. At one time it was thought that there was a kind of magic influence between western agriculturists and the up-country Boers of the Free State and Transvaal, such an influence, in fact, as would affect politics generally. The whole thing is a bugbear. There is little real sympathy between the smug and prosperous wine grower, who is happy among his wine vats, and the nomad Boer, who certainly would be unhappy there, and would soon lose his distinctive character.

All facts, therefore, seem to point to the conclusion that the days of Cape Town as the seat of Government in South Africa are numbered. In that Federal Dominion, which Sir Hercules alludes to, it is certain that Cape Town would not be the governing centre, and it is contrary to all reason that she should expect it. In the judgment of those who have known both the eastern and the western provinces, there must be a conviction that there are inherent differences between the two provinces which it is impossible to ignore. There was, and still is, a great deal of truth in the late Mr. Paterson's theory (the member for Port Elizabeth), that there was a distinct line of cleavage between east and west. The histories of the two provinces are entirely different. Sir Henry Loch will evidently be struck, like other travellers before him, with the differences between east and west. The native problem alone differentiates the one from the

other, and it is at places like the Missionary Training Institute at Lovedale or Blythewood, or in the midst of the Transkei magistracies, and in Basutoland, the Switzerland of the Cape Colony, that the attempts to solve the native difficulty, the great difficulty after all in South Africa, can be best seen and appreciated.

The three portions of South Africa, defined geographically in the opening pages of this paper, are linked together in a common history, not very intelligible in all its circumstances, as all of us who know South Africa fully understand. The part which each centre of population and industry will take in the great task of civilizing and regenerating the whole is not apparent. There may in the future be a great clashing of interests and a confusion of sounds, and Central Africa may provide battle-fields for European against European instead of giving all opportunities for combining for common enterprises and labors. But England's position is clear, and her duty plain. She cannot draw back from South African responsibilities, and must go forward. It is unwise to haggle over small sums to be spent in native administration, when this outlay in the future will repay itself a hundred fold. Moreover, the experiment has been made, and proof upon proof has been afforded, in the Transkei magistracies and in Basutoland, that native territories can, by means of a hut-tax and small imposts willingly given by Kaifirs, pay for their own government.

In the distant interior there is a market for manufactured goods, second to none in the world.-National Review.

starvation which have characterized the evolution of life from the beginning. It is also true that the processes consequent on conformity to these principles are responsible for the production of torturing parasites, which outnumber in their kinds all other creatures.

To those who take a pessimist view of animal-life in general, contemplation of these principles can of course yield only dissatisfaction. But to those who take an optimist view, or a meliorist view, of life in general, and who accept the postulate of hedonism, contemplation of these principles must yield greater or less satisfaction, and fulfilment of them must be ethically approved.

Otherwise considered, these principles are either, according to the current belief, expressions of the Divine will, or, according to the agnostic belief, indicate the mode in which works the Unknowable Power throughout the Universe; and in either case they have the warrant hence derived.

But here, leaving aside the ultimate controversy of pessimism versus optimism, it will suffice for present purposes to set out with a hypothetical postulate, and to limit it to a single species. If the preservation and prosperity of such species is to be desired, there inevitably emerge one most general conclusion and from it three less general conclusions.

The most general conclusion is that, in order of obligation, the preservation of the species takes precedence of the preservation of the individual. It is true that the species has no existence save as an aggregate of individuals; and it is true that, therefore, the welfare of the species is an end to be subserved only as subserving the welfares of individuals. But since disappearance of the species, implying disappearance of all individuals, involves absolute failure in achieving the end, whereas disappearance of individuals, though carried to a great extent, may leave outstanding such number as can, by continuance of the species, make subsequent fulfilment of the end possible; the preservation of the individual must, in a variable degree according to circumstances, be subordinated to the preservation of the species, where the two conflict. The resulting corollaries are these:

First, that among adults there must be conformity to the law that benefits received

Second, that during early life, before self-sustentation has become possible, and also while it can be but partial, the aid given must be the greatest where the worth shown is the smallest-benefits received must be inversely proportionate to merits possessed: merits being measured by power of self-sustentation. Unless there are gratis benefits to offspring, unqualified at first and afterward qualified by decrease as maturity is approached, the species must disappear by extinction of its young. There is, of course, necessitated a proportionate self-subordination of adults.

Third, to this self-subordination entailed by parenthood has, in certain cases, to be added a further self-subordination. If the constitution of the species and its conditions of existence are such that sacrifices, partial or complete, of some of its individuals, so subserve the welfare of the species that its numbers are better maintained than they would otherwise be, then there results a justification for such sacrifices.

Such are the laws by conformity to which a species is maintained; and if we assume that the preservation of a particular species is a desideratum, there arises in it an obligation to conform to these laws, which we may call, according to the case in question, quasi-ethical or ethical.

II. SUB-HUMAN JUSTICE.

Of the two essential but opposed principles of action by pursuance of which each species is preserved, we are here concerned only with the second. Passing over the law of the family as composed of adults and young, we have now to consider exclusively the law of the species as composed of adults only.

This law we have seen to be that individuals of most worth, as measured by their fitness to the conditions of existence, shall have the greatest benefits, and that inferior individuals shall receive smaller

benefits, or suffer greater evils, or both results-a law which, under its biological aspect, has for its implication the survival of the fittest. Interpreted in ethical terms it is that each individual ought to be subject to the effects of its own nature and resulting conduct. Throughout sub human life this law holds without qualification; for there exists no agency by which, among adults, the relations between conduct and consequence can be interfered with.

Fully to appreciate the import of this law we may with advantage pause a moment to contemplate an analogous law; or, rather, the same law as exhibited in another sphere. Besides being displayed in the relations among members of the species, as respectively well or ill sustained according to their well-adapted activities or ill-adapted activities, it is displayed in the relations of parts of each organism to one another.

Every muscle, every viscus, every gland, receives blood in proportion to function. If it does little it is ill-fed and dwindles; if it does much it is well-fed and grows. By this balancing of expenditure in action and payment in nutriment, there is, at the same time, a balancing of the relative powers of the parts of the organism; so that the organism as a whole is fitted to its existence by having the proportions of its parts continuously adjusted to the requirements. And clearly this principle of selfadjustment within each individual is parallel to that principle of self-adjustment by which the species as a whole keeps itself fitted to its environment. For by the better nutrition and greater power of propagation which come to members of the species that have faculties and consequent activities best adapted to the needs, joined with the lower sustentation of self and offspring which accompany less adapted faculties and activities, there is caused such special growth of the species as most conduces to its survival in face of surrounding conditions.

This, then, is the law of sub-human justice, that each individual shall receive the benefits and the evils of its own nature and its consequent conduct.

But sub-human justice is extremely imperfect, alike in general and in detail.

In general, it is imperfect in the sense that there exist multitudinous species the sustentation of which depends on the wholesale destruction of other species; and

this wholesale destruction implies that the species serving as prey have the relations between conduct and consequence so habitually broken that in but very few individuals are they long maintained. It is true that in such cases the premature loss of life suffered from enemies by nearly all members of the species, must be considered as resulting from their natures—their inability to contend with the destructive agencies they are exposed to. But we may fitly recognize the truth that this violent ending of the immense majority of its lives, implies that the species is one in which justice, as above conceived, is displayed in but small measure.

Sub-human justice is extremely imperfect in detail, in the sense that the relation between conduct and consequence is in such an immense proportion of cases broken by accidents-accidents of kinds which fall indiscriminately upon inferior and superior individuals. There are the multitudinous deaths caused by inclemencies of weather, which, in the great majority of cases, the best members of the species are liable to like the worst. There are other multitudinous deaths caused by scarcity of food, which, if not wholly, still in large measure, carries off good and bad alike. Among low types, too, enemies are causes of death which so operate that superior as well as inferior are sacrificed. And the like holds with invasions by parasites, often widely fatal. These attack, and frequently destroy, the most perfect individua's as readily as the least perfect.

The high rate of multiplication required to balance the immense mortality among low animals, at once shows us that among them long survival is not insured by superiority; and that thus the sub-human justice, which consists in continued receipt of the results of conduct, holds individually in but few cases.

And here we come upon a truth of great significance-the truth that sub human justice becomes more decided as organization becomes higher.

Whether this or that fly is taken by a swallow, whether among a brood of caterpillars an ichneumon settles on this or that, whether out of a shoal of herrings this or that is swallowed by a cetacean, is an event quite independent of individual peculiarity: good and bad samples fare alike. With high types of creatures it is otherwise. Keen senses, sagacity, agility, give