reading. The author possesses a clear and forcible style, and has the faculty of arranging material in a systematic way. This book cannot fail to be suggestive even to those who disagree with its main contention. DAVID IRONS.
Democracy ; A Study of Government. By James H. Hyslop, Professor of Logic and Ethics in Columbia University. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899.—pp. xiii, 300. }}
The author of this book is one of those people who dislike and distrust popular government, and who attribute all the political evils of the age to democracy. He declares that "our institutions are a failure" (p. 278); that something must be done "to arrest the rapid progress toward destruction" (pp. 3-4) ; and that "democratic government requires radical modifications, if it is to fulfil the pretensions of its admirers and to escape the present tendencies toward anarchy " (p. 19). The particular evils he complains of are "unjust taxation, costly government, 'machine politics,' the organization of monopolies under state protective policy, degeneracy in the type of public officials, socialistic legislation, demagogic appeals to ignorance, and private greed and betrayal of the hopes thus encouraged, defiance of intelligent public opinion, blackmailing of corporations, conferment of special favors either openly or by indirection upon various business agencies, and perpetual meddling with the laws of trade and the rights of individuals" (p. 12). That is a formidable list, surely, and we are given to understand that all those evils are due to democracy, or, in plain terms, to the fact that the working men have a share in the conduct of affairs. To remedy the evils complained of, and save society from the ruin that assails it, is Professor Hyslop's object in writing this book.
In the treatment of his subject he shows a temper and a spirit of exaggeration, which are by no means favorable to philosophical discussion, and he seems to have written his book in a state of constant irritation. He affirms that "democracy, as it is applied in this and all other countries, involves, to consider it from the standpoint of universal suffrage, the government of the prudent, the intelligent, the property, and the social classes by the imprudent, the ignorant, the non-propertied and the antisocial classes" (p. 258). He declares that the average politician "too often has about as much honesty as the devil" (p. 233); and that "the single purpose that animates the average politician is the same that inspires the beggar or the thief"
