OUR NEW BOOKS. BEHIND THE BARS: A Retrospect of an Insane Asylum. Many works upon the treatment proper for insane patients have been published; but never, we believe, until now, has one been produced so well calculated by its details to promote the essential benefit of those whose state so strongly appeals to the liveliest sympathies of mankind. Ordinarily, those who bave bad the misfortune to become inmates of retreats for the insane, for a period however brief, revert to this season of restraint with reluctance or not at all. Few of those discharged cured would be willing to recapitulate the circumstances of their own condition, or of their surroundings while "behind the bars." Few would be capable of recalling and minutely recording those circumstances for public information. We do not know that heretofore any one has been found both capable and willing. In this consists the peculiar merit of this book, that with a faculty of observation uncommonly alert, and a power of meniory amazingly retentive, this author has been able to present a picture of such vivid and practical interest. Mad. Schwartz's New Novel. THE WIFE OF A VAIN MAN. By Mad. Marie Sophie Schwartz, author of "Gold and Name," Birth and Education," 99 06 Guilt and Innocence," etc. Uniform in style and price. Paper, $1; cloth, $1 50. Oliver Optic's New Story. UP THE BALTIC; or, Young America in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. One handsome 16mo vol. Ilustrated, $1 50. Elijah Kellogg's New Book. THE YOUNG DELIVERERS OF PLEASANT COVE. 16mo, illustrated, $1 25. The Life of a Good Man. CONTENTS: Dr. Holland, in Scribner's Monthly, says of the New The Pupil of the Legion of Haven House, New Haven, Conn., kept by Mr. S. H. Mose Honor. BY LOUIS ENAULT. Translated from the French by Mrs. CHAS. P. TUFT. 8vo, paper, $1; cloth, $1 50. A most delightful story; pure in tone, elevated in senti ment, and of the greatest interest, it will undoubtedly prove one of the literary successes of the season. PORTER & COATES, Publishers, PHILADELPHIA, PA. VAN NOSTRAND'S SCIENTIFIC CATALOGUE. NEW EDITION NOW READY. A Classified Catalogue of American and Foreign Prepared with a view of aiding Professional Men and D. VAN NOSTRAN D', 23 Murray St. and 27 Warren St., New York. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of ten cents. ALCOTT-STOWE. The 38th Thousand of Miss Alcott's LITTLE PRICE $1 50. MEN. Just Ready, 10,000 Copies Sold., ley, former partner of Brevoort House, in this city, that it is a model for luxury, neatness, order, and thorough good management. BREAD-LOAF INN, Ripton, Vermont. A GOOD PLACE TO PASS THE SUMMER AT. CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE. 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PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY. 1870, wishes a pupil with whom to travel in Europe. The For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers. Sent, post-paid, 'on receipt of price by the Publishers, JAME R. OSCOOD & CO.. Late TICKOR & FIELDS, and FIELDS, OSGOOD & CO. A Fine Cafe, two billiard balls, elevator, telegraph office, in fact, all modern conveniences, eutice the traveller to the AMERICAN HOUSE, BOSTON. Once there, he would not willingly change his quarters. "Mr. Peter K. Deyo, for many years an advertising 7 Beekman Street, New York City. POLITICS seem to be rather livelier in Massachusetts than anywhere else, though it is only among the politicians and editors that there is much stir as yet. Governor Claflin declines a renomination, an act which is said to mean that there are several gentlemen who wish to be governor, that the nomination of some of them would split the party, and that it has been decided that Mr. Claflin, who could be elected, shall withdraw, and that the split, if it is coming, shall be permitted to come this year. Our old acquaintance, General Butler, is understood to want the nomination, and probably he is as strong a candidate with the people as anybody else, for to the greater portion of the Republican vote he could add the vote of the Labor Reformers and what votes the Woman's Rights women could influence-such is esteemed to be the virtuousness of those ladies in political matters. But politics in Massachusetts have been so long in the hands of one party, that Massachusetts has a set of hack professional politicians between whom and the average voter the difference is much like that between a country mouse and an astute old stable-rat in the city, so, some candidate really weaker than Butler with the people, and not a particularly shining light morally either, may carry the convention. Doctor George B. Loring, for example, who is a professional office-seeker who has for years been painfully seeking the governorship, is said to be very determined not to be put off this time. His friend Butler is popularly believed to have robbed him of one or two nominations, and this time the Doctor will make an out-and-out fight. But it may be doubted if any convention can be made to believe him really a formidable personage, and if he may not be thrown aside unregarded as he was by Butler-a gentleman who knows when to be bold as well as he knows when not, Other candidates are plentiful, but no names of particular prominence are mentioned except Mr. Hoar's, which, in view of his recent services, would doubtless be a strong one; but probably the men inside politics could mention several things which, in spite of their fondness for him, compel them to think him unavailable. Mr. Phillips, we see, is out in favor of his friend Butler, and it might cheer the spirit of Doctor Loring if he would go over in his mind the times when Mr. Phillips was on the winning side, and of these see how many there were when he did not immediately set off and go into his own corner. In Ohio, the leaders are trying to import some life into the contest, but it is hot, and everybody languishes. In September, however, there will be hard work, and it may reasonably be expected that the Republicans are going to carry the State, which is what they could hardly venture to hope two months ago. For one thing, the Ohio Democracy are open repudiators, and that alone ought to be the ruin of them. For another, it is by no means all of them who are pleased with "the new departure," and a great deal of the vitality and power of growth in that bantling of Mr. Vallandigham's were buried when he was, so that what hope there was of his serpent's swallowing up the others has in good part disappeared, and there is division in the Democratic ranks which will be felt at the polls. Then, too, there is a quarrel as to whether the candidate really got votes enough to nominate him, while the Republicans, on the other hand, escaped Mr. Ben Wade as a candidate-definitively, we trust, relegating that war-horse to grass, in spite of his announcement that he should deem himself false to his record if he could decline to obey the summons of the party-and escaped also a San Domingo plank in their platform, or rather declined outright to put one in. Those Republican journals, then, are probably right which are expecting a Republican success; but probably those are not so right which, we perceive, are already getting their mouths made up to announce the success as 66 an endorsement of the administration of President Grant." One good result, by the way. of a thorough civil service reform would be that there would be a stronger tendency to make State elections turn on State questions, and the attention of the people would be concentrated on their local officeholders, who would be called to a stricter account than at present The general Government's means of interference now work harm in various ways, both in Washington and in every State capital. The weighty question whether the President would pardon Bowen the bigamist has, we believe, at last been solved. He has pardoned him, on the ground that he acted in good faith; but no public explanation has yet been offered of the fraudulent divorce proceedings here and in Connecticut. The Bowen bigamy having been got out of the way, the prominent Washington topic is the dispute between Mr. Boutwell and General Pleasanton-the latter, to make a long story short, denying the right of appeal to Mr. Boutwell from his decisions as Commissioner of Internal Revenue. They have come to loggerheads on other points, but this is the main question between them; and the beauty of the affair to the cynics is, that Mr. Boutwell is suffering now from the operation of a law made to exalt the Commissionership in power and dignity during the Johnson period, when Mr. Rollins held it, and the Secretary of the Treasury was suspected of heresy. The law gave nearly the whole control of the Internal Revenue collection to the Commissioner, and Mr. Boutwell, who was its most prominent supporter, forgot to get it repealed before he came into office. But the quarrel with General Pleasanton began when the latter came out against the income tax, and issued regulations for the assessment which went far to make its collection impossible, Mr. Boutwell being a firm supporter of it. The difficulty of settling the dispute lies in the fact that while the Commissioner has a very fair color of law on his side, and has a strong hold on the President's favor drawn from old military associations, the Secretary is rather too important an official to be lightly sacrificed, and has won a high reputation for honesty and fidelity, which ought not to be much to say of a financial minister, but, in the times in which we live, is a great deal. Mr. Boutwell has held enormous power over the money market ever since he took office, and the absence of all suspicion of abuse of it is certainly a strong testimony to his character. The brutal assault on the Orange procession, in celebration of the Battle of the Boyne, which occurred last year in this city, and which the police made little effort to prevent, and for which nobody was punished, led to preparations on a great scale among the Orangemen to repeat the celebration this year, and to still more extensive preparations among the Catholic Irish for an attack on them. The result was that the city was for a full week in expectation of a bloody riot yesterday (Wednesday). The Orangemen called on the city authorities for protection, and the Catholics vowed that no protection should avail them; but the Catholics, for obvious reasons, carried their point, and forced Mayor Hall and the Superintendent of the Police into the unparalleled step of prohibiting the procession. The two documents-one a letter from the Mayor to the Grand Master of the Orange Association, and the other the general order of the Superintendent of Police-in which the reasons for not permitting the reception are given, are perhaps as amusing contributions as have yet been made to the literature of the municipality. Not that the reasons are not all good; they are those which have made the best Irishmen for the last seventy years look on the Orange societies as curses to Ireland, and which have led to the statutory prohibition of these processions in Ireland, after years of violence and bloodshed; and no candid and disinterested person can gainsay their force. But coming from Mayor Hall and Superintendent Kelso, who are well known to be simply obeying the orders of the Irish Catholic mob, represented in the Ring by two of its prominent members, they have a very ludicrous sound, particularly as the same authorities saw no objection to Fenian processions, which were highly offensive to thousands, or the great German procession, which celebrated a triumph in war to the last degree humiliating to another portion of the American population. This open surrender of the city authorities to a lawless and bloodthirsty mob, involving as it did the establishment of a precedent which would make all processions dependent on the will of the majority for the time being, and put into the hands of the Mayor the power of deciding what events it was proper for American citizens to celebrate by parade, was too much even for the New York public; it was too much even for Governor Hoffman, and at last roused in him the old American Adam, which seems to have been sleeping a good deal of late. So he came to New York, revoked the Superintendent's order, issued a proclamation announcing his intention to protect the Orangemen at all hazards, and put the troops under arms, and at this writing stands ready to open a passage for the procession at the point of the bayonet. We are, of course, heartily glad that the city has been saved from the disgrace which the Mayor and his confederates were about to inflict on it, and glad, too, that the followers of the Ring are about to receive a lesson in toleration; but this does not prevent us regretting deeply that this affair has ever occurred, because it marks, we fear, the formal transfer to American soil of one of the most ferocious, baleful quarrels of the Old World. We shall now have to prepare for a battle in the streets every Twelfth of July, and even if the law be every year successfully enforced-which is at least doubtful-the hates and antagonisms which these processions breed will burn through the rest of the year, and lead to many an outrage. The persons who parade in honor of St. Patrick in this city every year have certainly not as yet established many claims to the sympathy or respect of the American public, and get very little of either; but it ought not to be forgotten, in comparing the St. Patrick's procession with the Orange one, that St. Patrick was a Christian missionary and civilizer, and that a tribute to his memory does not and ought not to rouse any bitterness or animosity in the mind of any rational man. His name is associated with nothing but peace and good-will. The Battle of the Boyne, on the other hand, though it established civil and religious liberty on a firm basis in England, and was, therefore, one of the most important battles in history-pace the historians of the City Hall-was for the Irish the beginning of a period of almost unparalleled misery and oppression, and established among them a system of class-rule which it is no exaggeration to call devilish, and which came to an end only at the time of the American Revolution. That the Irish Catholics should therefore still remember it with hate and rage, and should see in a public celebration of it a kind of open rejoicing over their sorrow and degradation, and that the spectacle of such a celebration should rouse the more ignorant and degraded of them into blood and fury, is nothing wonderful. Orangemen profess to be very pious and great Bible-readers, and are, we believe, on the whole, a highly respectable and intelligent body of men. It may not, therefore, be useless to suggest to them, that now that their rights have been vindicated, the most creditable thing they could do for their order and for Protestantism would be to go in procession no more. turns; that various misappropriations of large sums of public money and jobs have been proved against them; that large sums of money which pass into their hands have disappeared and have not been accounted for; that they for two years persisted in refusing to publish any accounts whatever; that they corrupt the legislature of this State and two of its judges. It is no answer to these charges to say that the city government is improving in their hands, that our parks are better kept, or our streets better paved. That might satisfy a French atheist or a Roman pagan, it ought not to satisfy "professing Christians" in America. It is not enough for us that the government is efficient we have to see if we can that it is pure, that honest men administer it, and that neither its honors nor profits go to knaves, or ruffians, or whoremongers. Civilization demands this of us, and we owe it above all to the next generation not to give up trying for it, however wearisome the task may be. We may be thankful that Tweed and Sweeny are no worse, but we cannot afford to pardon them for being so bad. Such men cannot be forgiven, no matter how the parks are kept, if we mean to keep up the semblance of a moral standard in politics. Of course, we understand many good people's being weary of the denunciation of the Ring kept up by the New York Times, but then we do not see how moral, much less religious, men can find fault with that paper on any other grounds than those of taste or policy. We think, for our own part, the persistence and pluck it has shown have been deserving of the highest praise, and if anybody finds its iteration tiresome, it is the theme which is to blame. The one good and all-sufficient reason for denouncing the Ring every day is that the Ring is every day appropriating the public money, or debauching the public conscience. We used ourselves, in like manner, to be frequently requested to let Butler alone, at a time when Butler was every day trying some new trick in Congress, or making some effort to demoralize the public out-of-doors. There came near being a very ugly tussle between the Times and Tribune last week-so near, indeed, that people began to put up their shutters and call the children in from the street, the cause being that old and delicate one of "free love," which seems of late to have a more irritating effect on the newspaper mind than anything in the whole range of "topics." It began with Mrs. Paulina Davis, who writes flowery letters in the Tribune, showing that, when a wife does not like her husband, she ought to have the privilege of leaving him and trying another; to which the Tribune very naturally replied that this was "free love," and that, when a woman made a mistake with one husband, there was no reason why she should not make a mistake with the second, and so on, and pointed out the obvious conclusion that under this system there was good ground for fearing that large numbers of women would go on trying new men all their lives, without ever finding their soul's darling-that is, that we should have under it no addition whatever to the happiness of society, and a very considerable addition to its filth. It also pointed to the murder in Newark of the late distinguished statesman, "Pet " Halsted, and the numerous murders of Mrs. Sherman of Connecticut, as illustrations of the consequences of indulgence of lawless desires. Whereupon the Times remarked that this was very surprising language to come from that quarter, and the Tribune immediately began to take off its coat and cravat, and there was for a few minutes prospect of bloody work. Business is even duller than is usual at this season of the year. Under the influence of large receipts here and lower prices in Europe, breadstuffs have declined, although the principal European crops are reported unpromising. Cotton has further advanced on the accumulat The City Ring has done a pretty good stroke of business during the week in procuring the publication of an apology for them in the New York Evangelist, the highly respectable organ of the Presbyterian body. Nobody who knows anything of the editor will doubt that he published it in perfect good faith, but it was nevertheless an act of singular indiscretion. It was the result, we learn, of an evening's conversation in his own house with Judge Hilton, whom the Evangelisting evidence of a largely increased consumption, but the weather has pronounces a good man, but who, good or bad, has shown remarkable facility during the last two or three years in acting with some outrageously and notoriously bad men, and from whom, therefore, it would be absurd to expect a fair statement of the condition of the city government under the Ring in an evening's chat. There arecertain facts about the Ring which admit of no denial. As, for example, that its members have grown enormously rich in a very few years without being engaged in any legitimate business calculated to bring in large re been more favorable for the growing crop. Meats are firm at the prevailing low prices, dry-goods are dull, coal unexpectedly firm, and real estate stagnant. Exports are light, and the foreign exchanges were consequently strong, with an advancing gold premium, until the close of the week. But the extraordinary success of the French loan had the effect to stimulate to a great degree all the financial markets of Europe, a very marked demand for American bonds resulted, leading to large shipments, with a consequent decline in exchange and a moderate reaction in gold. Later on, rumors of a sudden and unexpected success in the attempt to place our new five per cent. bonds abroad were generally circulated, then denied, 'and finally again reported as confirmed, the negotiation being reported as made through the London house of Jay Cooke & Co. The financial markets are all more or less affected by these rumors and reports, which, in view of the general buoyancy of the money market abroad, are entirely probable. The new French loan is quoted at a premium, and the old Rentes have advanced to 56, which is the highest point touched since the first reverses of the Empire. The discovery that the coin reserve and securities of the Bank of France as well as of many other financial institutions remained entirely untouched by the Commune, despite reports to the contrary, has contributed materially to the revival of confidence and activity in France and throughout Europe, but there are many minor indications that the seeming prosperity is in many instances fictitious and artificial. There is some alarm in England over the fact that the Council of the International Society have marked out England as the country in which their great experiment on modern society can be most effectively tried first, as the country in which "the capitalist power-labor combined on a great scale under master capitalists-has gained possession of the whole process of production," and the only country where "every change in the economic facts will immediately react on the whole world." In short, “the English have every material condition for the social revolution; what they have not, is the generalizing spirit and the revolutionary passion." The Council decides, therefore, that while England is a good place in which to set the work on foot, it ought on no account, owing to the moral defects of the Englishman, "be allowed to fall into purely English hands." In other words, the Assys, Dombrowskis, and Cluserets are to be brought over to manage it. This prospect of the Commune say in London or Liverpool, worked by the statesmen who superintended the institution in Paris, has apparently alarmed some of the "educated men" who were apologizing for its doings, a month or two ago. The Spectator has a strong appeal to the English workingmen not to be led astray, and Professor Beesly writes to the London Times trying to "hedge" a little. says that the account given by a "distinguished Positivist," some time ago (whom we have reason to believe was M. Littré), of the aims and creed of the Communists, was not authoritative. Its correctness, however, is not denied, and indeed the address of the Council, from which we have made extracts elsewhere, confirms it in every particular. We have more than once cited it in the Nation. Anybody who has read it, or read any statement of the objects of the Commune emanating from anybody connected with it, must have been amused by the accounts given of these objects to the American public by Messrs. Wendell Phillips and B. F. Butler. The New York Times made an attempt to drive Mr. Phillips into a corner by publishing in parallel columns what Mr. Phillips says about the Commune and what the Commune says about itself, which, however, only shows that the Times did not know its man. What would it say if Mr. Phillips were to inform it that all the Communists knew about the Commune they had learned from him? He Concerning the French elections of July 2, the Cable has left us in considerable darkness, the reports continuing contradictory both as to the number and the political complexion of the candidates elected. The first classification spoke of " 120 Republicans, 8 Legitimists, and 12 Bonapartists;" the next of "86 for Thiers, 13 Radicals, 2 Legitimists, 3 Orleanists, and 1 Bonapartist"; then we hear that "the elections have increased the majority of the supporters of President Thiers in the Assembly by fully 100"; and, finally, that the election of M. Moreau "increases the Republican delegation from the capital to 7"--though Paris elected 26 representatives. Thus much, however, is certain, that the aggregate of the elections is generally felt and admitted in France to have been a great victory for both Thiers and the Republic, though not all Thiersites elected are Republicans, and not all Republicans supporters of Thiers. Both Legitimists and Bonapartists have suffered a crushing defeat; more or less secretly, however, they console themselves with the thought that their Republican antagonists, who are now masters of the field, will soon manage to · 19 compromise their new position by excesses and errors -a speculation which derives only too much support from the history of the past. The Comte de Chambord has hastily acknowledged the utter rout of his supporters-though not of his hopes-by announcing that he is not going to avail himself of the recent abrogation of the proscription laws for taking his abode in the country of his birth and royal ancestors, for fear that his presence in it might give countenance to agitation. He is to wait until France will call him not only to her bosom but to her throne, and then, he adds, "we shall found a government with decentralization, liberty, and universal suffrage as our mottoes." These are sound mottoes, and somewhat different from some enunciations lately made by the same august personage when the royalist tide seemed to be irresistible. He continues, however, to praise the army, though the vote of the army in the supplementary elections may have contributed more than anything else to cast dismay into the ranks of the Bourbonists, and into the heart of their future Henry V., who had tried so hard to cajole MacMahon into playing the part of Monk. That vote is reported as overwhelmingly Republican, and to have been cast for lists of candidates "all headed with the name of Gambetta," which, if true, is of rather evil omen for the future of France, as it signifies the desire of the army either for a dictatorship or for war. Gambetta himself, however, is stated to counsel moderation, and the doings of the National Assembly show that it sees in the elections not the triumph of Gambetta, but of Thiers. The old statesman's principal care is to pay the indemnity, get rid of the Germans, and pacify Fiance. He is reported to have discharged half of the Commune prisoners, His attitude towards foreign powers, Germany and Italy not excluded, is friendly. One of the great difficulties within is the question of the unpaid Paris house-rents. There is a fierce conflict going on in France over the income-tax, which the free-traders of the agricultural and wine-growing districts clamor for, as a good substitute for the protective duties with which M. Pouyer-Quertier threatens them, and which they, having tasted the sweets of free-trade, dread. The protectionists are strongly opposed to the tax on the ground that it would be a tax on a class, and therefore odious and dangerous, and would yield little, the great mass of French incomes being so small, and would lead to an enormous amount of fraud and evasion, Frenchmen thinking it no great harm to cheat the government. The result will probably be a compromise, as M. Pouyer Quertier will probably find it impossible to carry out the protectionist programme as it now stands, involving a rise of about 300 per cent. in the customs duties. The German celebrations of victory and peace are over, or nearly over. There were, on a number of days, grand displays, rejoicings, and thanksgivings throughout the new Empire, both north and south of the Main. The city of Hanover, which five years ago was deprived by Prussia of its dignity as the residence of a sovereign king, seems alone of all the great cities of the Empire to have given vent to its feelings of disaffection towards the triumphant Hohenzollern, by refusing to vote the sum required for a celebration-an act of discord which has caused much comment of an unpleasant character. The ultramontanes of various parts of Germany added to the mortification thus inflicted on the more passionate unionists by not only celebrating on the days of the triumphal entry and thanksgiving at Berlin-July 16 and July 18-the coinciding twenty-fifth anniversaries of the election and sec-taking of Pope Pius IX., but also boasting that the jubilations in honor of the Catholic Pontiff surp issed those performed for the glorification of the Protestant Emperor, Things, however, passed off quietly everywhere, and Germany is gradually subsiding into real peace and unity. Annexation proclivities here and there continue to be manifested, some self-constituted leaders of public opinion demanding the incorporation of the German provinces of Austria, others the deliverance of the Germans in the Baltic provinces of Russia, and still others the occupation of the Island of Heligoland; but these reckless counsels are scouted by the better sense of the nation, as either premature, adventurous, or flagrantly unjust. THE GREAT LAND QUESTION. THE growing indifference on the part of the great body of the people in Europe to political questions, as distinguished from social questions, is aggravated in England by the difficulty of the land question, which is both social and political, and on the whole, perhaps, more social than political. It is not denied that the constitution of society is everywhere more or less dependent on the way in which the land of the country is held. If a few persons hold it, they will almost inevitably form an aristocracy, and exercise an amount of social and political influence such as no other species of property of equal value would give them. If the majority are landholders, they will form a democracy, and the existence of a small privileged or influential class, let it be never so wealthy, will be difficult or impossible. This well-known influence of the distribution of land on politics and society is in England strengthened by the traditions of a thousand years. The national character itself has worked in its favor. There is something in the unprogressiveness and permanence, and the having-and-holding character of this kind of property, which is grateful to ninety-nine Englishmen out of a hundred, in spite of the bold spirit of speculation displayed in English commercial history. All English speculators, however, from the Conquest down, whether they fought or traded, did so with a view to owning land, and surrounding their names with the fixity of land. The result has been, however, that the soil on which over 30,000,000 of people live has worked itself gradually into the hands of 30,000 proprietors, and the tendency in the same direction continues as strong as ever. Whichever way English reformers turn, therefore, they find themselves face to face with the land question. The process of democratization cannot be carried much if any farther than it has gone, unless the great estates can be broken up, or, at all events, an end be put to their agglomeration. But how is either of these things to be done without attacking the very principle of property, which moderate reformers are just now very anxious about, and feel to be seriously imperilled by the assaults of a much less scrupulous enemy? There was a time when it was the fashion of platform agitators to say that all that was needed was to abolish primogeniture; but it has now be. come generally known that you might abolish primogeniture without seriously affecting the size of English estates in five centuries. The death of an owner of real estate in England without having made a will, and having regulated the descent of his property by a settlement, is a very rare occurrence—so rare that it might for all practical purposes be said to be unknown, and it is only in cases of intestacy that the law of primogeniture operates. The law might, as in France, interfere with the right of testamentary disposition, but this would be evaded by "settlements," such as are now made between father and son, and to interfere with these open proclamation has to be made of the theory that there is a distinction between real and personal property, which requires that the transmission, transfer, and tenure of the one should be regulated in a different manner from those of the other. This is the theory, however, which the English Tories have held and legislated on for centuries, and, what is more to the purpose, it is the theory against which the English Radicals have always fought. The latter have invariably contended that the sale or descent of a piece of ground should be as easy as that of a sheep, and the formalities no greater or more expensive than might be necessary to provide proper evidence of title. This view, however, the Conservatives have of late shown a suspicious willingness to accept, and the Radicals have begun to find out that, even if they got it embodied in legislation, the absorption of the small holdings would probably go on as rapidly as ever, for the simple reason that, owing to the eager competition for land among persons who have made large fortunes in trade, the price of land all over England is what dealers call "a fancy price"-that is, a price which men pay for a luxury, and which makes the usual return on capital impossible. No man buys an estate in England nowadays with the view of making money out of it. He buys it with the view of "founding a family," and giving himself social consideration, and amusing himself. The buyers of land, therefore, are always in the market, offering prices which no holder who is dependent on his land for his living can well afford to refuse, and which in practice few men of the farming and yeomanry class, in these days of speculation, emigration, and travel, think of refusing. The process which is going on all over England is, in short, the one which everybody is familiar with in the neighborhood of our great cities in this country, where land has come into demand for "country seats," and, therefore, risen ten or twenty times above its value for farming purposes. In other words, poor men cannot afford to own land. The evils of this state of things are now a subject of daily comment. The separation of the great body of the people from the soil, and the stripping of the land of all sentimental association with the national life, and its reduction to the character of an instrument of production simply, and the diminution to a mere handful of the number of those who can be said to have any real interest in the defense of property against the disorganizing theories which are gaining currency among the inhabitants of the great cities, are matters which begin to excite serious apprehension amongst all who have anything to lose. France, whenever the devil of socialism is let loose in her great cities, is able at once to meet him, and, if need be, to crush him with millions of peasant proprietors. But what could thirty thousand "noblemen and gentlemen," who now constitute "the landed interest " of England, do if the landless majority were to become hostile to, or even indifferent about, their rights? It is not the Radicals only, therefore, whom the present state of things is alarming. Conservatives, too, begin to see its dangers. How is such a division of the soil as exists in France-supposing it to be desirable-to be brought about? It has in France been the result of three things-the general impoverishment of the noblesse, through their extravagance and exclusion from trade and from intermarriage with the commercial class before the Revolution; the confiscation and sale of noble and church estates during the Revolution; and the abolition of the freedom of testamentary disposition made by the Revolution. When we consider what all these things mean, and what an extraordinary combination of circumstances has been needed to produce them, it will be seen that even if the condition of landed property in France were never so desirable, it would be no easy matter to introduce it into any other country. To introduce it into England would require a far greater upturning than has ever taken place in France. Supposing it were introduced, however, and supposing it to be desirable, would it be possible to maintain it without a great change in the Anglo-Saxon character and in the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of life? There is one fact in the social condition of both England and America which has to be seriously considered by anybody who undertakes to regulate the distribution of landed property in either of them, and that is the growing indisposition of the people to play the part of small farmers, and their increasing eagerness for town life and increasing restiveness under the solitude and monotony of country life. The French peasant's love of land and the tenacity with which he clings to and labors on the minutest portion of the soil, are in a large degree the result of his ignorance and want of enterprise. If he were educated and his horizon enlarged, and the spirit of speculation or desire to " get on," which devours Anglo-Saxon societies like? a fever, were once to take possession of him, we should assuredly hear no more of the extreme division of the soil in France. It is safe to say that wherever the peasants are educated, or, in other words, wherever the farming-class is ceasing to be peasantry, the alienation from farming life, which is so marked a feature of American society, has sprung up or will spring up. The soil of England might, therefore, be parcelled out among farm laborers to-morrow, but if their sons went to the district schools and got a knowledge of strange places, and a hankering after the easy gains of trade, and the clean life of the store, the probabilities are very strong that they would be found disposing of their patrimony or abandoning it as eagerly as the sons of farmers in New York or Ohio. The truth is that the railroad, the telegraph, and the newspaper have taken the magic out of freeholds The process of the concentration of land in few hands does not go on here because, in the first place, no man can here get either income or social consideration out of the holding of larger tracts of farming land than he can himself cultivate, and, in the second place, because Europe is steadily supplying a class who are still in the peasant condition of mind and body, to take the place of the natives who are abandoning |