THE STARRY NIGHT.

I mind myself a little child,
Maybe that ragweed's height,
When first I lifted up my eyes

And saw the stars at night.

I saw them caught among the leaves
Like fishes in a net;

The wonder of the child I was
Comes back upon me yet.
Old Shan he took me by the hand
And pointed overhead,

Where every great big star I saw
Blazed green and blue and red.
Above the haggard the Great Bear
Went prowling through the sky.
I saw the Pole Star flash its lamp
For ships to journey by.
Shan pointed where the lady sits
Inside her shining chair,

And told me thim that travels takes
The Milky Way up there.

Above the mountains Venus hung,

Above the sea blazed Mars.
Ah! God-the wonder of that night
When first I saw the stars!
W. M. Letts.

The Westminster Gazette.

TO HIS LOST BELOVED. Oh, little thing, oh, wondrous thing, Why did you slip so soft away? Love touched us with his angel wing Once upon a day.

Love touched us and we were content To travel this great world and wide, Nought caring how the hours were spent

So we were side by side.

We had enough of toil, we two.

I worked to fill the cupboard shelf; The hardest lot was left for you,

To save the pence and spend yourself.

Diverse the laws of man and maid.
He, suing humbly, taketh all;
She giveth gladly, unafraid,

Until her strength is past recall.

Love spread his dove-gray wings of

peace.

Love, furl thy rose-lined wings of

pain!

Great angel, Love. my anguish ease;
Give me my little love again.

So human was she and so kind,
So mother-like, so childlike too,

I would not blot her from my mind
As fools-or wise men-do.

I cannot blot her from my mind;
I think of her by night and day,
Yet she hath left a toy behind
With which she used to play.

She held it close with arms of love;
It lay so softly at her breast,
Till Fate the eagle from above
Swooped down upon the nest.

Oh. little love, one hapless morn
Silent and swift you slipped away.
Now I am left, a thing forlorn,
To face a world gone gray.

The Spectator.

W. J. Cameron.

There are two consequences in history: an immediate one, which is at once recognized; and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; the former are the results of our own limited wisdom; the latter those of the wisdom that endures.Chateaubriand, Memoirs.

Between a good and a bad economist, this constitutes the whole difference: the one takes account of the visible effects; the other takes account of both the effects that are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresce. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.-F. Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy.

and

Nine legislators out of ten, ninety-nine voters out of a hundred, when discussing this or that measure, think only of the immediate results to be achieved; they do not think at all of the indirect results.-Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics.

That which philanthropists and political reformers leave almost unthought of, as an object to be labored for, is that which, above all other objects, is worthy of their labor. Attracted as their attention is by special evils to be cured, they think little of the universally diffused evils which the non-enforcement of equity entails. -Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology.

If social reformers had taken to heart the principles enunciated in the foregoing quotations, many of the deplorable social conditions which now prevail might have been avoided. Ignorance, failure to foresee indirect results, or neglect of the study of sociology, have been the shoals on which social reformers have struck; and, with the best of intentions, they have often caused, or intensified, the

evils they have sought to remedy.1 Herbert Spencer has rightly said:

For a large percentage of horrors, which our agitators are trying to cure by law, we have to thank previous agitators of the same school.'

Again referring to the stock cry of Socialists against the evils of competition, he says:

Interferences with the law of supply and demand, which a generation ago were admitted to be habitually mischievous, are now being daily made by Acts of Parliament in new fields, increasing the evils to be cured, and producing fresh ones, as they did in fields no longer intruded upon.'

He has also pointed out that, during the reign of Queen Victoria, 650 Acts of Parliament had been repealed, and

1 The following extract from the "San Francisco Argonaut" shows how the failure to foresee indirect results in the case of "the minimum wage" has been a cause of unemployment: "Before passing a Wage Bill for Girls it would be well to mark, learn, and inwardly digest a news item from Oregon. A report comes from the Young Women's Christian Association and from the Catholic Women's League that the new law will throw hundreds of girls out of work in Portland alone, and that strenuous efforts will be needed to avert distress. Employers who are now giving work to large numbers of incompetent girls at commensurate wages will discharge them, and replace them by others who are actually worth the minimum wage. The unfortunate ones are now facing a 'dire situation.' Many of them are without homes, and are entirely dependent on the meagre wages that a benevolent but empty-headed legislature has taken from them."

The "Boston Advertiser." in a similar strain, writes: "To say that the State shall pay a certain minimum wage would be to deprive many persons of work and of a needed income, small as it may be. It would be in many cases, of which sociological workers know, an act of almost incredible cruelty on the State's part. It would be a procrustean attempt to fit the hard, incontestable facts of the lives of some lowwage-earners to the pompous theories of ignorant persons who imagine themselves called to be reformers." In like manner the Insurance Act in England has deprived large numbers of employment.

"Social Statics," p. 384.

8 Spencer, "Sins of Legislators."

that many of these, having proved injurious, must have for years inflicted on people much misery, sickness, and increased mortality; and he added:

Uninstructed legislators have, in past times, continually increased human suffering in their endeavors to mitigate it.'

Since Spencer drew attention to this evil, it has very greatly increased. During the past few years numbers of ill-considered, mischievous Acts, directed against capital, have been rushed through Parliament with frantic haste, and almost without discussion, increasing the prevalence of pauperism and unemployment to an extent that urgently demands social reform.

It is obviously the duty of all Christians to use their utmost endeavor to improve these deplorable conditions, and various leagues and unions have been formed with that object. The legitimate aims of the Christian social reformer have been admirably set forth by Bishop Westcott, in his presidential address to the Christian Social Union in 1894. They are, briefly:

To bring together the different classes, with a view to strengthen the sense of fellowship by mutual understanding; to enforce the weight of mutual responsibility of employers and employed, of buyer and seller, of landlord and tenant; to insist on the reality of social conditions, as brethren in one Lord; to cherish and deepen the sacred relations of the family, in which all relations of social life find their root.

In short, the aim should be to bring into our daily life the application of our duty to God and our neighbor, as taught in the Church Catechism.

To carry out this programme, it is necessary to try to reconcile the interests of labor and capital; to show that their interests are inseparable; to enforce the need of co-operation, and the Spencer, ibid.

cessation of those internecine wars between capital and labor which have proved ruinous to both; and to endeavor to relieve that excessive taxation which has been imposed by Socialistic legislation on land and capital, bringing ruin on all classes of the community.

Unfortunately, a large number of social reformers labor under the delu sion that the social evils in question are due to, and inherent in, the system of private property in land and capital; that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; and that the only remedy lies in Socialism. They therefore pose as "Christian" Social

The so-called "Christian" Socialism misleads the ignorant masses, and encourages them to support that real, practical Socialism which the masses will insist upon having should Socialism

unfortunately gain the upper hand in England: a Socialism which preaches doctrines of atheism, classhatred, spoliation, violence, and immorality; a Socialism that spouts blatant blasphemy at the street corners and in the parks; and a Socialism that urges measures which cause ruin to the country, and misery to the poor.

Socialists of the present day have disguised the ugly features and failures of Socialism of the past by dressing it up in the pretentious garb of "scientific" Socialism, thus deluding the public that it is something quite new and superior. This claim is based on the acceptance of that incomprehensible and self-contradictory jargon, Marx's Capital, which is in reality absolutely unscientific; its very foundation-stone rests on the exploded "Ricardian" economic fallacy that labor alone produces wealth, or that all value is the product of labor.

Professor Macleod, in his History of Economics, has completely demolished this fallacy, demonstrating its utter "Overwhelming evidence that such doctrines are the logical outcome of Socialism has been published in a pamphlet entitled "The Danger of Christian Socialism" (Anti-Socialist Union of Great Brit n, 55 Victoria Street, S. W.). This evidence has been obtained not merely from the utterances of a few rabid extremists but from the deliberate writings and speeches of the acknowledged leaders, and from the recognized organs of Socialism.

By the laws of inductive philosophy, if we find a single case of value which is not the result of labor, that single instance would alone be sufficient to overthrow the doctrine that labor is the sole cause of value; but, instead of one instance there are multitudes; it is probable that not 20 per cent. of valuable quantities have anything to do with labor. In short, there never was any doctrine in science which has received such a crushing and overwhelming overthrow as of value; that labor is the hence that system of economics, which founds its ideas of wealth and value on labor, is utterly fallacious."

cause

Of the numerous cases which Macleod has cited to prove the absurdity of this doctrine, it will only be necessary to quote one as a specimen, which even a child might understand:

If labor be the sole cause of value, then all things produced by equal quantities of labor must be of equal value. . . a lump of gold and a lump of clay ought to be of equal value, if produced by equal amounts of labor.

Similar cases, in every description of wealth or value, might be multiplied to any extent.

Marx himself admits that the whole subject is enveloped in mist; and as Mr. de Tunzelmann has justly observed, with regard to Marx's very candid admissions of the impenetrable density of the mental fog in which he has become involved:

He appears, however, to be totally unconscious that the fog is entirely of his own manufacture, obvious as this must be to every unprejuMacleod, "History of Economics," p.

646.