His

unbelief, which was the strongest current of his age. private life was inoffensive and decent. He had been the equal of emperors and kings; an army of 700,000 men obeyed his word; he controlled millions of secret service money, and could have obtained what he liked for pardons; and he lived on a Deputy's allowance of eighteen francs a day, leaving a fortune of less than twenty guineas in depreciated assignats. There is no doubt that he held fast to the doctrine of equality, which means government by the poor and payment by the rich. Also, he desired power, if it was only for self-preservation; and he held it by bloodshed, as Lewis XIV had done, and Peter the Great and Frederick. . . . His private notebook has been printed, but it does not show what he thought of the future. . . . Only this is certain, that he remains the most hateful character in the forefront of history since Machiavelli reduced to a code the wickedness of public men.' (French Revolution,' pp. 299-300.)

...

With the Directorial Constitution and the whiff of grapeshot' Lord Acton's survey of the French Revolution comes to a close. The hopes of a royalist Restoration had been blasted by the failure at Quiberon and the death of the Dauphin in the Temple prison. Peace had been made with Tuscany, Prussia and Holland; and the author of the noyades at Nantes had gone the way of Hébert and 'the glowing patriarch of irreligious belief.' A new constitution, 'affording security for order and liberty such as France has never enjoyed,' had been launched upon a trial destined to be brief and stormy. The peasants had doubled their wealth, and socialism had been averted by wholesale confiscations. The conquests of France surpassed the utmost successes of the monarchy under Louis XIV. By arbitrary control over promotion and the cheapness of French lives,' an energetic and honest engineer of no very commanding ability had learnt the art of organising victory. The golden orb of Freedom had set in a sea of blood. The death of the Dauphin left the hope of the royalist cause in the hands of the émigrés; and the alternative to the Revolution became again, what it was at the beginning, the rule of a privileged caste and a legitimate sovereign.

The student who has mastered these impressive fragments of an unaccomplished design must feel sad when

he reflects that behind the polished front of the printed page lay vast stores of thought and knowledge which have perished with Lord Acton beyond recall. What we have gained is much, what we have lost is immeasurably more. In the history of the French Revolution, where the issues are so perplexed, so controversial, and so much obscured by wilful forgery, vague misrepresentation and idle report, a narrative unsupported by critical discussions loses something of its value. That Lord Acton should have concluded thus and thus affords a strong presumption that it was so. Yet what would we not give to hear him defend the authenticity of the famous memorandum which Favras is said to have written, Talon to have possessed, Napoleon to have coveted, and Louis XVIII to have burned! In a tourney with M. Lenôtre and Mr Oscar Browning over the flight to Varennes, would he have victoriously established his contention that the King was ruined by gluttony at Étoges? Would Mr Belloc have persuaded him that Carnot was a genius, and M. Aulard that Danton was not the murderer of Mandat? On these and many other delicate and doubtful points Lord Acton would undoubtedly have commanded a respectful hearing from his interlocutors, even if he failed to extort their assent. But such colloquies and discussions can never be. The massed battalions of the reserve stand shrouded in darkness, and the general is no longer here to marshal them into action. Perhaps some day a young scholar will in a due spirit of piety take down from their shelves at Cambridge the long array of histories and memoirs on the French Revolution which bear the traces of Lord Acton's reading, and when he has mastered these, and the Croker collection of pamphlets in the British Museum, which Lord Acton read and greatly prized, will give us an annotated edition of the Lectures which will enhance their authority and furnish a fresh illustration of the genius and industry of their author.

H. A. L. FISHER..

Art. 9.-NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE.

1. National Insurance Bill. London: Wyman, 1911. 2. National Insurance Bill: Report of Actuaries (Wyman); and Memorandum by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. London: Harrison, 1911.

3. The People's Insurance.

Explained by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911.

4. Krankenversicherungsgesetz von 1883: Invalidenversicherungsgesetz von 1899. By Dr E. von Woedtke. Berlin: Guttentag, 1886, 1902.

5. Die Krankenversicherung im Jahre 1909. Statistik des deutschen Reiches, Band 238. Berlin: Puttkammer,

1910.

6. Amtliche Nachrichten des Reichsversicherungsamts. Berlin: Behren, 1911

7. The Prevention of Destitution. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. London: Longmans, 1911.

8. National Health Insurance. By E. J. Schuster, LL.D. (Reprint from 'Journal of Comp. Legislation.") London: Murray, 1911.

THE scheme of national compulsory insurance against sickness and unemployment embodied in the Bill now before Parliament has been called great; and the epithet may fairly be allowed, without prejudice. It is a great scheme and, in regard to that part which deals with unemployment, a very bold one, because without precedent. Its initiation reveals a large grasp and high political courage. No timid or conventional statesman would have planned or brought forward a measure of such magnitude and based on principles so novel in this country. That makes its reception the more remarkable. The Bill was hailed on its introduction with general approval ranging from guarded appreciation to unmeasured eulogy. This means that the scheme has been launched at an opportune time and is being borne along on a general stream of social and political tendencies. Its author has shown intuition as well as courage.

The truth is that these proposals fall in with a great movement which is stirring all Western nations in varying degrees and becoming more insistent year by

year.

It is the master movement of our day. Its aim is the improvement and diffusion of physical well-being. This ideal dominates and takes precedence of all others. To many it has become the only ideal; and even those who acknowledge other ideals are coming to place it first. Its realisation is sought chiefly by means of 'social reform,' by which is meant the legislative readjustment of social and economic conditions. Social reform is all but synonymous with legislation for the promotion of physical well-being; it may include a few other objects and modes of endeavour, but they are of comparatively small and dwindling importance. Such legislation takes many forms, but they fall for the most part into two main groups, which aim respectively at (1) preventing the abuse of power by one class or group of individuals over another; (2) the re-distribution of wealth, chiefly by means of taxation.

The Insurance Bill belongs in the main to the second group. It proposes to tax employers in particular and taxpayers in general for the benefit of employed persons and especially those engaged in manual labour. Mr Lloyd George in his speech at Birmingham on June 10 said that the employer does not contribute; it is the industry that contributes. That is mere juggling with words. The cost comes out of the employer's pocket unless he can put it on to the consumer-which he can seldom do in an unprotected country-or take it out of wages, in which case the benefit is illusory. The question whether he gets it back in improved work is a different thing. That is an assumption, whereas the payment is a certainty. And a vast number of the employers who will contribute have no industry. Those, for instance, who contribute on account of domestic servants, who form by far the largest class on the list, will certainly pay out of their pockets. There is not the slightest doubt that this is a form of class-taxation. But the scheme is more than that. Compulsion is also applied to the benefited class, who are subjected to compulsory thrift. They are compelled to help themselves and at the same time encouraged and helped to do so.

It is the compulsory and contributory character of the scheme that commends it to general favour. People feel that it is social reform, not Socialism; and they are quite

right. It resembles the Public Health Acts more nearly than any other; they also tax everybody, hit propertyowners in particular, and apply a certain amount of compulsion to the poor. In fact it is a sort of Public Health Bill, with a limited application and a more obvious pecuniary element. Of course it interferes with people. All laws do; that is what they are for. But general objections on that ground have no force. They are not only obsolete by common consent, but are rooted in confusion of mind. The defenders of liberty and property on principle do not understand that the two objects they couple together are, strictly speaking, incompatible. The rights of property themselves imply interference with someone's liberty; they could not exist without it, because in its absence possession would be determined entirely by desire, force, and cunning.

Consequently no absolute objection to interference can lie. What those who put it forward really object to is some particular interference irksome to themselves. They have a perfect right to do so. Interference must be justified; it must be held reasonable and beneficial on the whole; and that is determined in each case by the general sense of the community. In the present instance the community may be said to have given a prima facie decision. The object, which is immediately to lighten the burden of misfortune to those less able to bear it, and so ultimately to raise their efficiency, commands universal sympathy; the method of attaining it by means of insurance has been long tried and approved in a voluntary form, and has been successfully applied on a compulsory and contributory basis in Germany.

These considerations explain and justify the general reception of the Insurance Bill. But there is a certain irony in the situation. The real father of the scheme which has drawn ecstatic superlatives from the denunciators of militarism and Imperialism was none other than Bismarck, the man of blood and iron, the great Empiremaker. His brain conceived the plan and executed it on a far grander scale than our present Insurance Bill. His scheme included not only sickness and disablement, but accident and old age. It not only inspired Mr Lloyd George's effort, but led the way to our Workmen's Compensation Acts and Old Age Pensions, though unfortuVol. 215.-No. 428.