asleep unless violently awakened. For the State, though capable, theoretically at all events, of judging a man's economic transactions and position, is not capable of judging a man's life and self, and ought not to make a pretence of doing so except when crime, for example, forces its hand. Distinguished thus, economic and social reform appear very different in nature and effect. The first is warrantable and necessary; the second is not, and in practice usually does more harm than good. To the poor, economic reform means a measure of justice between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'; but social reform means 'police,' whether they are really required or not. It involves, too, that which Mr John Burns so well protested against when he said in the House of Commons that, being by nature a kindly man, he was averse from the creation of new crimes.

Granted the above distinction between economic and social reform, most of the provisions of the Factory Acts, Food Adulteration Acts and improved housing come under the economic category. The extreme importance of better housing is acknowledged. Miss Loane, whose opportunities of forming an opinion on the matter have been almost unique, declares that the housing of the poor is disgracefully bad, and often the matter is beyond their individual control.' 'Moreover, the poor are seldom or never in a position to put any pressure upon their landlords, and dare not make open complaints of the condition of their houses.' But it needs to live day by day in a working-man's house, even a comparatively good one, to realise how his life is hampered in every direction by the fact that he does not, and cannot, obtain value for his rent-money. On the other hand, if Mr Pett Ridge, an open-minded and close observer, is to be believed, temperance reform, that typical example of the social reformer's work, has achieved very little except the harassing of one class.

'Reforms which have so far come in the drink habits of the people cannot be claimed by Parliament. . . I wish the results of an Act were always as good as its intentions. It is certain that when the Houses of Parliament decided no child under fourteen should be served in a public-house unless as a messenger conveying a sealed bottle, they honestly believed they were doing the wise, judicious thing. The actual Vol. 212.-No. 422.

N

consequences, so far as my observation goes, have been that, whereas in former days the youngster was dispatched with a jug and brought it back filled (taking slight toll on the way, more as a declaration of independence than from any appetite for the beverage), now the mother or father has to take the jug, and being inside the cheerful public-house, feels that courtesy demands a drink should be ordered for consumption on the premises. If acquaintances are met there, the silly procedure of treating is perhaps started.'

My own experience entirely bears out Mr Pett Ridge's. If Sunday closing comes into force we shall no doubt buy on Saturday nights a bottle of spirits, or get in half a dozen bottles of beer, and on Sundays we shall, I dare say, finish the lot in an aimless festivity, instead of discussing the news of the day over a couple of glasses of beer in a public-house. The Children Act, which forbade the public-house to children, has proved, in that respect a kindness to everybody but the children. If those journalists who belauded the Children Act, under the name of 'The Children's Charter,' could have realised how much undeserved insult to the poor was contained in their laudations, and how much resentment arose therefrom, they would have moderated their appeal to the shallower sentimentalism of their readers. Cigarettes have now an additional attraction to boys of any spirit. When they can smoke openly, they will smoke, as the saying goes, like furnaces. To make such laws is to render the law a farce.

Social reform on the part of the legislating classes is, in effect, an attempt to modify lives hardly known, with results that cannot be foretold. No statistics or inspections can grasp those imponderables of life, which alone count in the end. Miss Loane's books, and in a lesser degree the others, form one long protest against neglect of the imponderables in poor people's lives. It is observable that social reformers are demanding more and more inspection, a system the inherent defects of which are greater than its qualities. It is resented as an impertinence by the poor; it ignores the imponderables; it judges the lives of one class by the standards of another; and long before it attains efficiency, even within its own narrow limits, the cost has become prohibitive. Social reform based on such a system cannot but be misguided.

It has been said that the cardinal difference between the lot of rich and poor is, that the former have more margin in which to remedy mistakes. It is exactly that inequality, that proportional difference of margin, which economic reform can remedy. It would give to the poor the opportunity of progressing in the only sound manner, by their own efforts and on their own lines. They have their ideals as much as any other classes, but not at present the same means of attaining them.

It will be noticed that the broad principles here advocated (not very systematic principles perhaps-how can they be in such a chaos?) are more akin to what has been called the Old Tory attitude than to most attitudes. They tend, in fact-if it is not stretching terms too far-towards a New Toryism or Nationalism, a Nationalism founded on respect for the poor; less bent on 'raising them out of their station' than on providing them with justice in that station, and the chance of bettering themselves whenever by their own efforts they can do it; sufficiently sensible of human brotherhood in the elemental things of life not to be under the illusion that equality necessitates sameness; prepared to honour the poor for what they are, where they are; confident that there are many different lines of devolopment, and therefore tolerant of other class customs and class aims; and conscious always that, as the poor so often say, it takes all sorts to make a world-or a well organised nation. That, it must be confessed, is an ideal perhaps highflown. Without imputing its imperfections to the poor, I put it forward less as my own than as what they themselves have taught me. There was, and still lives, a social reformer who at last despaired and said, 'It's no good; I go on because I've started; but what we want in order to set things right is a new religion, and only that can do it.' A new spirit in dealing with the poor is indeed wanted; a spirit of understanding and of patience, and above all of good-fellowship. From that the rest, or at all events a good deal of it, would follow, and the problem would begin to be solved the right end foremost.

STEPHEN REYNOLDS.

Art. 8.-DEMOCRACY IN SWITZERLAND.

1. Les Constitutions Fédérales de la Confédération Suisse. Par C. Hilty, Docteur en Droit, Professeur à l'Université de Berne. Neuchâtel, 1891.

2. De la Liberté Politique dans l'État Moderne. Par Arthur Desjardins. Paris, 1894.

3. Governments and Parties in Continental Europe. By A. Lawrence Lowell. Two vols. London: Longmans, 1896.

4. The Swiss Confederation. By Sir Francis Ottiwell Adams, K.C.M.G., C.B., and C. D. Cunningham. London: Macmillan, 1889.

5 The Swiss Republic. By Boyd Winchester, late United States Minister at Bern. Philadelphia: Lippincott,

1891.

6. Government in Switzerland. By John Martin Vincent, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Johns Hopkins University. London: Macmillan, 1900.

7. Die Schweiz seit 1848. Von Prof. Dr J. Schollenberger. Berlin, 1908.

8. Geschichte der Schweiz. Von Dr Karl Dändliker. Drei Bänden. Dritte Auflage. Zürich, 1893.

And other works.

THE late Sir Leslie Stephen has taught us to call Switzerland the 'Playground of Europe.' Only during the last century did it assume this character. The first English guide-book to that country-a very humble precursor of our Murray and our Baedeker-was published in 1818 by Daniel Wall, of London. The work was a sign of the newly awakened interest in the Swiss lakes and mountains, due, probably, to Lord Byron more than to any one else. Now, I suppose, there are few Englishmen or Englishwomen, of even moderate means, who have not visited Switzerland, for longer or shorter periods, who have not fallen under the spell of its happy valleys and sunny vineyard slopes, of its snow-clad mountains and its wild torrents with their unceasing thunder and eternal foam,' of its blue lakes set in frames of dazzling verdure, of its cities, so diversely beautiful: Geneva, bright and sparkling as Paris itself, Lausanne, dowered

with perpetual youth, Schaffhausen, where the charm of the Middle Ages still lingers, and imperial Bern, adorned with umbrageous roads, gigantic terraces, noble fountains, and antique walls well-nigh encircled by the swift-flowing Aar. Then there are the Swiss people, simple but shrewd, candid but courteous, homely but hospitable. Are there any of us who have sojourned among them, far away from the scurry and scramble, the tedium and treacheries of London life, with its fumum et opes strepitumque,' and have not felt, 'It is good for us to be here?'

But it is not of these things that I am about to write, nor of the debt that not a few of us owe to 'bathing in the salubrious and beneficial mountain air,' to use Rousseau's words, which he prophetically discerned as 'one of the great resources of medical science.' There is another point of view from which this little country-it is half the size of Scotland-has a strong claim upon our consideration. Mr Winchester, who for some years resided in it, as Minister from the United States, has well remarked, 'Switzerland is constantly solving, in her own way, some of the hardest problems of politics.' It will be well to see what certain of those solutions are. Possibly we may learn from them. But before proceeding further, let us glance briefly at the past career of the country, of which its existing institutions are the outcome.

National freedom in Switzerland has its roots in a very far-off past. She has always been democratic since she found place on the map of Europe, and indeed long before. Six hundred and eighteen years ago the three Forest Cantons on the Lake of Luzern entered into the Perpetual Alliance which was the starting-point of the Swiss Confederation. But Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden were democracies for many previous centuries. In fact they had never been anything else. The German tribeif we may so speak of the Alemanni, who were the ancestors of the people of those Forest Cantons, brought with them into Switzerland, in the third century, the immemorial liberties of their Teutonic forests, based on freedom, which was not necessarily equality, of person and of vote. The freemen, who had their dependents, and, in course of time, their slaves, were lords to themselves, and in their assemblies discussed and determined all matters of national importance. The officers who