subjected to crushing taxation for the benefit of the idle and the inefficient, the result being, as sociologists have often pointed out, a marked decline in the rate of increase of the former and a corresponding acceleration in that of the latter. Reduced incomes among the provident and conscientious necessarily mean reduced families. Nevertheless, politicians in Australia and elsewhere carry their worship of numbers to such absurd extremes that in their estimation quality of human material is wholly subordinate to quantity. They speak and act as though a country to whose population half a million imbeciles were added each year were in a far more flourishing condition than another which could only boast a yearly crop of half as many physically and mentally healthy children. So long as public opinion complacently tolerates a code of morals which sanctions the casting each year of myriads of unhappy beings into the sea of life with stones round their necks, even the most enlightened legislators, it must be admitted, are powerless to find legal remedies for the worst ills that afflict humanity. To eugenists and social reformers who have thoroughly studied the all-important science of heredity belongs the task of spreading the beneficent doctrines taught by Francis Galton, Dr Huxley, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and many others. But the figures and statements contained in the notable report furnished by the Commission on the Care of the Feebleminded in Great Britain nearly twenty years ago should at least be sufficient to warn all legislative bodies of the danger of enacting laws by which conditions are created favourable to the multiplication of the less fit. Any law that tends to lower the popular conceptions of the responsibilities of parenthood, or that penalises the worthy for the sake of the unworthy, has that tendency, and is pregnant with future danger to the State.

'Uninstructed legislators,' wrote Herbert Spencer in his 'Sins of Legislators' many years ago, have in past times continually increased human suffering in their endeavours to mitigate it.' How far such legislators in these days are the products of a political system which necessarily subordinates in matters of government the higher intelligence and morality to the lower, and confuses, so far as the masses are concerned, the un

questionable right to good government with the assumed right to govern, is a question which need not now be considered. Even in Australia, however, it may be observed, there are found reactionaries of some intellectual standing who fail to find satisfactory reasons why the gaol-bird should be regarded as the political equal of the judge, or the judgment of the illiterate tramp be treated as equal in value to that of the manager of a great industry, or the highly-trained member of a learned profession. But it is a marked characteristic of democratic legislation that it is based on the assumption that happiness depends solely, or mainly, on material comfort and opportunities for enjoyment. In aiming at the attainment of an impossible equality of social conditions, Australian legislators have throughout ignored the truth contained in that fine saying of Aristotle which tells us that the general welfare depends, not on the equalisation of men's possessions, but of their desires. Instead of fostering healthy ambition, and stimulating manly effort, political humanitarianism has destroyed contentment, the necessary ingredient of true happiness, and greatly weakened among the masses the ennobling sense of social duty. On the other hand, the disruptive forces of envy and cupidity have been strengthened in a perilous degree. Napoleon once declared envy to have been the chief cause of the great French Revolution, and no human failing, probably, has been the parent of more discord and misery. Politically as well as morally the results of excessive legislative indulgence have always been disastrous. Patriotism withers when benefits are received without service or sacrifice. A Government loses all respect when it becomes a mere dispenser of charity. Ubi bene, ibi patria,' is the motto of the spoilt child of the State. Australia now possesses exceptional claims to be adopted as a fatherland by patriots of this exalted type.

It is noticeable, nevertheless, that with the growth of a spirit of vicarious generosity in Australian Parliaments the public respect for those bodies has steadily declined. There is a universal distrust of the political philanthropist who is always ready to use the public funds for the wholesale distribution of grants and pensions. While, no doubt, in many cases those benefactions are prompted

by a real wish to do good, even the least observant can hardly fail to perceive that no small number of the politicians who continually demand further extensions of the charitable activities of the State are men who are not peculiarly distinguished in private life by the exercise of philanthropy. Motives not unconnected with self-interest are therefore ascribed to them. They undoubtedly encourage many of their supporters to vote rather than work for a living. To the mind of the honest man indirect corruption is more repulsive than direct, although to the politician who practises it, the former method is decidedly the less costly. But the moral loss to the community caused by the diversion of large sums of public money from useful purposes to those of the kind now referred to is far greater than the material. The history of decadent Rome tells us how rapidly the moral fibre of the descendants of the conquerors of Carthage weakened under the pernicious system of State paternalism introduced during the distracted period which immediately preceded the fall of the Republic. Pensions and General Elections now take the place of bread and games, and the exhibitions in the Parliamentary amphitheatre are happily bloodless. Fortunately, however, the youth of Australia and the virility and independence of its people ensure to the latter safeguards against degeneration unknown to the exhausted and impoverished masses of the greatest of ancient cities.

Young countries can successfully combat political diseases which often prove fatal to the old. But the time seems to have arrived when the rulers of the Commonwealth need reminding that national greatness depends on national character, and that while it is wholly right that the State should respond promptly and generously to the appeal of undeserved misfortune, it should exercise the most scrupulous care lest, by unwisely enlarging the scope of its benefactions, it should weaken among the people those moral qualities which are the necessary foundations of healthy corporate

life.

F. A. W. GISBORNE.

Art. 10.-M. RAYMOND POINCARE.

'HE seeks only to understand men, individuals,' the late Jules Lemaître said once of Sainte-Beuve, 'and that is less impossible than to understand the world or history.' In M. Lemaître's reflexion there is comfort for any one who is interested in personality but apt.to be bewildered by politics-any one who, recognising that life is too short for a really thorough-going study of events, yet feels that in some measure he can enter into the minds of the men and women taking part in them. The problem of the Ruhr, for instance, is extraordinarily complex to join usefully in the discussion of it one ought to be an expert in economics and possess encyclopædic knowledge, not alone of France and Germany, but of the whole of Europe.

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It should be less impossible' to understand M. Ray-Sid mond Poincaré, the sturdy, square-jawed, very honestlooking, very typical little soldier-scholar-journalistlawyer from Lorraine, who is now Premier of the French Republic. What sort of man is he? For six months past we in England have had him pictured to us alternately as an unscrupulous and dangerous Imperialist, a fanatical hater of the Germans, a woodenheaded blunderer, a weak tool of men abler than himself. We shall know better what to think of these somewhat conflicting conceptions of the Poincaré of to-day if we glance for a few moments at the earlier phases of his

career.

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Raymond Nicholas Landry Poincaré was born-so the State Register attests-on Aug. 20, 1860, and at five o'clock in the afternoon,' at Bar-le-Duc, in the département of the Meuse, a town famous for its soldiers: even before the Great War it had given France two Marshals and over fifty Generals. Both his father (a civil engineer of some prominence in Government service) and his mother came of families of good standing, long settled in Lorraine. 'A notable boy, serious, energetic, kind, speaking and writing well,' young Raymond left his native place in 1876 for Paris, there to study philosophy at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. The years 1878-79 saw him a law student in the Quartier Latin, living in the same house as his cousin, and senior by six years, Henri

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Poincaré, the mathematician. By the end of 1880, having completed the first phase of his military service,* he had settled in the capital for good, a full-fledged barrister, but with no practice as yet and earning his livelihood by his pen. Readers of the Voltaire' knew him as 'Maître Aubertin,' a legal chronicler and commentator. He wrote regularly for the 'XIXme Siècle,' too, and a few poems and a short novel from his pen had been accepted by L'Echo de l'Est.'

It was probably not much of a novel, but in those early student days of his in the Quartier there must have been material for an amusing book by some one who to the skill and charm and humour of a Murger or & Du Maurier could add a zest for other things beside love and the arts. It was still the same Quartier, quite unchanged, and we may be sure that the little Poincaré group-a group of six-knew something of its gaiety and romance. The two cousins took their meals at the Pension Laval, an establishment of which Gambetta and Daudet and François Coppée had been frequenters. Here they met regularly their four great friends: Etienne-Alexandre Millerand, the present French President; Gabriel Hanotaux, so famous since both as statesman and as historian; Maurice Bernard, destined to be a great lawyer; and Paul Revoil, a future GovernorGeneral of Algeria. Raymond Poincaré, it appears, was the quietest of the lot-la prudence Lorraine,' the others called him. But he was no prig, no pedant, he could laugh and quarrel. His square jaw had already attracted notice. Sacre bleu !' Dumas fils is said to have exclaimed when the resolute-looking youth was pointed out to him, Quand celui-là tiendra un os, il ne le lâchera pas !'

The years which followed were less interesting. They were plodding years for the most part, relieved by one or two oratorical hits'-addresses delivered upon ceremonial occasions. At last, after a long period of hard work in comparative obscurity as assistant to a distinguished advocate, Maître du Buit, Raymond Poincaré's chance suddenly arrived. In 1886 M. Jules Develle, Minister of Agriculture, also from Lorraine,

Later, in the Reserves, he rose to be Captain in the Chasseurs Alpins.