claim to share in whatever is necessary to the common life (or commonwealth) is as indefeasible; the claim of the sick and helpless to be cared for by the strong with earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as imperative; the necessity that the governing authority should be in the hands of a true and trained pilot is as clear, and as con stant. In none of these conditions is there any difference between a nation and a boat's company. The only dif ference is in this, that the impossibility of discerning the effects of individual error and crime, or of counteracting them by individual effort, in the affairs of a great nation, renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society that direction by law should be sternly established. Assume that your boat's crew is disorderly and licentious, and will, by agreement, submit to no order;-the most troublesome of them will yet be easily discerned; and the chance is that the best man among them knocks him down. Common instinct of self-preservation will make the rioters put a good sailor at the helm, and impulsive pity and occasional help will be, by heart and hand, here and there given to visible distress. Not so in the ship of the realm. The most troublesome persons in it are usually the least recognized for such, and the most active in its management; the best men mind their own business patiently, and are never thought of; the good helms

nan never touches the tiller but in the last extremity; and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only from every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the aspect is of Cleopatra's galley-under hatches, there is a slave-hospital; while, finally (and this is the most fatal difference of all), even the few persons who care to inter fere energetically, with purpose of doing good, can, in a large society, discern so little of the real state of evil to be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of dealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be mis directed, and some may even do more harm than good. Whereas it is the sorrowful law of this universe that evil, even unconscious and unintended, never fails of its effect; and in a state where the evil and the good, under conditions of individual "liberty," are allowed to contend together, not only every stroke on the Devil's side tells-but every slip (the mistakes of wicked men being as mischievous as their successes); while on the side of right, there will be much direct and fatal defeat, and, even of its measures of victory, half will be fruitless.

It is true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the right conquers: the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a thousand, at last. verily comes up-and somebody lives by it; but most of our

great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson them. selves, are a little too encouraging in their proclamation of this comfort, not, to my mind, very sufficient, when for the present our fields are full of nothing but nettles and thistles, instead of wheat; and none of them seem to me yet to have enough insisted on the inevitable power and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter extinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its effect-but poison never and while, in summing the observation of past life, not unwatchfully spent, I can truly say that I have a thousand times seen patience disappointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have never yet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in calamity.

There is, however, one important condition in national economy, in which the analogy of that of a ship's company is incomplete: namely, that while labour at oar or sail is necessarily united, and can attain no independent

, or personal profit, the labour properly undertaken by the several members of a political community is necessarily, and justly, within certain limits, independent; and obtains for them independent advantage, of which, if you will glance at the last paragraph of the first essay in Munera Pulveris, you will see I should be the last * Appendix 6.

person to propose depriving them. This great difference in final condition involves necessarily much complexity in the system and application of general laws; but it in no wise abrogates, on the contrary, it renders yet more imperative, the necessity for the firm ordinance of such laws, which, marking the due limits of independent agency, may enable it to exist in full energy, not only without becoming injurious, but so as more variously and perfectly to promote the entire interests of the commonwealth.

I will address myself, therefore, in my next letter, to the statement of some of these necessary laws.

Letter 13.

The Proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke; or, "Overseer" and "Leader."

March 21, 1867.

I SEE, by your last letter, for which I heartily thank you, that you would not sympathise with me in my sorrow for the desertion of his own work by George Cruik shank, that he may fight in the front of the temperance ranks. But you do not know what work he has left undone, nor how much richer inheritance you might have received from his hand. It was no more his business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It is "the first mild day of March" (high time, I think, that it should be!), and by rights I ought to be out among the budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn, and clusters of primrose. This is my right work; and it is not, in the inner gist and truth of it, right nor good, for you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his great gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughly clear and definite one, should both of us be tormented by agony of