and the numerous countries which have received her capital. Prominent among the causes of business calamity he discusses the recent increase of war expenditures, rural depopulation, pauperism in England and Ireland, bad agricultural policy, millionaires as a cause of depression, speculation and finance, adulteration and dishonesty. In Part II several brief chapters are devoted to the suggestion of remedies.
The view taken by Mr. Wallace is broad and very instructive, His facts arc copious and pertinent, and the reasoning cogent and forcible. His ideas are far more elevated and philosophical than we arc accustomed to in treating this class of questions. This well appears in his closing paragraphs. He says: "In conclusion, I wish to direct my readers' attention to a very suggestive fact elicited by our present inquiry, and which appears to me to express the moral teaching of the whole subject. In every case in which we have traced out the efficient causes of the present depression, we have found it to originate in customs, laws, or modes of action which are ethically unsound, if not positively immoral. Wars and excessive war armaments, loans to despots, or for war purposes, the accumulation of vast wealth by individuals, excessive speculation, adulteration of manufactured goods, and lastly, our bad land system, with its insecurity of tenure, excessive rents, confiscation of tenants' property, its common-inclosures, evictions, and depopulation of the rural districts—all come under this category; while the one apparent exception, the bad seasons, would have been comparatively harmless (as instances here quoted have shown) under a thoroughly good system of land-tenure.
We thus see that the evils under which we have suffered, and arc still suffering, are due to no recondite causes, to no laws of inevitable fluctuation of trade, but wholly to our own acts, and to those of other civilized nations. Whenever we depart from the great principles of truth and honesty, of equal freedom and justice to all men, whether in our relations with other states, or in our dealings with our fellow-men, the evil that we do surely comes back to us, and the suffering and poverty and crime of which we are the direct or indirect causes, help to impoverish ourselves. It is, then, by applying the teachings of a higher morality to our commerce and manufactures, to our laws and customs, and to our dealings with all other nationalities, that we shall find the only effective and permanent remedy for depression of trade."
Overpressure in Schools in Schools, pp. 11; Sanitary Science and Public Hygiene. pp. 9. By W. S. Robertson, M. D. Muscatine, Iowa.
The author of these papers is President of the Iowa State Board of Health, and in the essays discusses two very important points in public hygiene. The former paper relates to the effects of overpressure upon the health and progress of school-children, and the signs by which its evil workings may be discovered. The second paper relates to the importance of diffusing sound information among the people, in order that they may recognize the value of sanitary science, and may learn how to participate in its benefits,
American Constitutions. By Horace Davis. Baltimore: N. Murray. Pp. 70. Price, 50 cents.
This is one of the Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science. Its purpose is to follow the changes in the relations of the three departments of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—which have been silently going on in the United States for the past century. In the State governments, under numerous alterations in their Constitutions, the powers of the Executive have been steadily enlarged, and the functions of the Legislature have been cramped and limited; in the Federal Government, Congress has encroached upon the field of Executive power; and everywhere, in both national and State governments, the judiciary has gained vastly in power and importance. The author believes that there have been three distinct strata of government in the old thirteen colonies. In the first or colonial period, the Executive was too strong; in the second, the Legislature; in the third, the balance was restored, and our State Constitutions are to-day, he believes, "as a whole, the most perfect framework of government for men living in a democracy, that human skill has ever devised."
