more vitiated progeny: children born with special
predispositions for crime

What, then, are the remedies? They would seem to be chiefly three. First, a transformation of the existing order of rights in the interest of the suffering working classes. Secondly, the addiction of adult habitual offenders to industrial servitude. Thirdly, the modification-to a great extent, the eradication -of the terrible tendencies transmitted by them to their offspring through a system of ethical discipline, of training of the will, which alone is education in the true sense

The poor in virtue, as in this world's goods, we have
always with us. But only in a society which has
lost, or largely forgotten, "the mighty hopes that
make us men," does poverty degenerate into pau-
perism, and vice grow rankly into crime
Without these hopes-our special heritage among the
tribes of animate existence-to lift us above the
self of the appetites and the passions, we do not
rise to the true level of human life, whether indi-
vidually or collectively

This is not, indeed, a first principle in politics. But it

is a first principle underlying all politics. The
known and natural do not suffice for human society.
It requires ideals which point to a life beyond the
phenomenal, where justice shall at length triumph,
where its rewards and penalties shall be adequately
realised, and which witness to a Supreme Moral
Governor who shall bring about that triumph and
realisation

That is the direct teaching of the parable of Dives and
Lazarus. On that teaching the poor lived throughout

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those ages which, whatever else they were or

ages of faith”

were not, most assuredly were Such was the contribution of Christianity to "the social problem." No doubt that teaching has been perverted to an argument for retaining the masses in material and economical degradation. But the abuse of a truth does not vitiate its proper use. Can the social question be rationally handled without the belief in the Divine Law of Righteousness expressed in the doctrine of Christ concerning poverty and riches?.

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Fragments of this work which have appeared from time to time in the Quarterly, Fortnightly, Contemporary, and New Reviews, and in the Nineteenth Century, now find their place in these pages, by the courtesy of the respective proprietors of those Magazines.

UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST PRINCIPLES IN POLITICS

UNIV. OF
CALIFORNIA

FIRST PRINCIPLES IN POLITICS

CHAPTER I

THE FOUNDATION OF THE STATE

A STRIKING characteristic of the present day is

the well-nigh total effacement from the general mind, of the idea of law. This statement will, perhaps, seem paradoxical to many of my readers. "Why," it may be objected, "there never was a time when law was more talked of; every school-boy, every school-girl babbles of it: you cannot take up a newspaper without finding some mention of laws of conduct, laws of political economy, laws of nature, laws of all kinds." True; but these so-called laws are, for the most part, not laws at all, for they do not possess that character of necessity which is of the essence of law. What are commonly presented to us as laws of conduct, are mere corollaries to what are designated laws of comfort. They are, as a writer much in vogue tells us, "generalisations from experiences of utility." But experiences of utility, however multiplied, cannot do more than counsel.