which controls the charity. Another says, "My son or daughter will receive a fair education at the public schools, yet I have no redress from paying the taxes of sectarian schools and colleges, which I do not think it necessary my children should attend." A poor man is unable to send his boy to the college of his own or any other denomination. He does not, however, escape the tax collector's demands, and has to provide for the children of others what he can not get for his own. The exemption of denominational schools is unjust to the public schools. Under it ratepayers not only pay public school rates, but have to provide improvements for the extensive properties held by these sectarian educational corporations.

The suffering taxpayers are further mulcted in the taxes of wealthy sisterhoods and brotherhoods, whose policy has ever been to accumulate property, in mortmain, and restrict their own number, and who derive large revenues from teaching, the practice of industries, and the produce of their farms and gardens. There is practically no limit to which these corporations cannot reach in acquiring property and holding it in the name of some church or charity-consequently, free from taxation. They may keep fifty, one hundred, two hundred good paying pupils, and hold sufficient land in the heart of some centre of trade from which enough or almost enough is raised to supply the fraternity themselves and their paying guests; yet these same people fail to admit that they are under any obligation to the public which supplies them with roads, light, water, and a host of other conveniences. The taxpayer has no means of knowing the receipts and expenditures of these corporations whose taxes he pays. He is beyond knowing whether, while he is struggling to pay the taxes imposed on him, the "exempted" ministers, professors, brothers, and sisters are not taking the affairs of this life very easily and probably saving money.

But besides being unconstitutional and unjust, sectarian exemptions are also demoralizing. The exemption of denominational properties has removed a necessary restraint, and encouraged extravagance in church and sectarian buildings. It has materially assisted in the development of the sentiment that finds expression, not in which creed shall do the most good, but in which

one shall have the costliest church, the most artistically laid out grounds, the most commodious manse for the pastor. To the brotherhoods and sisterhoods exemption is an incentive to accumulate property, instead of tending the sick and teaching the poor. If all these, church managers included, had to find taxes, they would think more of their spiritual duties—at least they would give less attention to worldly matters. Exemption also tends to the increasing of the number of denominations, while a marked sign of the times is a union of creeds. It makes clergymen dependent, while they should be independent.

CONCLUSION.

Without doubt, one of the strongest arguments against exemptions of all kinds is that of the "unearned increment." The untaxed property is constantly increasing in value, owing to the construction of improvements round it, and toward the cost of which it contributes nothing. Its market value is always augmenting at the expense of surrounding property. It has only to be left alone, and its value accumulates enormously. On the other hand, on assessed property, a sum, equal to the amount for which the property is rated, is paid every forty-five or fifty years in the way of municipal taxes. That is, the tax-payer really repurchases his property at the end of fifty years, while the "exempted," at the end of the same time, finds his property has doubled or trebled in value without the least expense or exertion on his part.

Were all property taxed alike, those large charitable and sectarian institutions, with their extensive grounds, which now have locations in the centres of cities, would be compelled to seek accommodation in country places, where taxation is lower. More room would then be left in the cities and towns for the demands of commerce, while these institutions and their inmates would be none the worse for their transfer beyond the city or town limits.

The abuses that flourish under exemption are numerous; they are growing, and demand speedy attention. President Grant, in a late message to Congress, alluded to the evils that were the outcome of exemption, and said complete assessment was the only remedy. In Quebec, the exempted

strate its irresistible power. Little did the strategists of those days dream of three hundred pounders, or of batteries of such huge monsters as were truly their ne plus ultra, What they did produce were boasts of wonder! There was Mons Meg, which still displays her amazing size in Edinburgh Castle; there was The Gun on the Cliff at Dover which bragged,

66

'Charge me well and sponge me clean,
I'll lay a ball on Calais Green."

There are the long cannon and the gigantic mortar, brought from distant lands, to adorn St. James' Park, the former plotted to Fieschi a King; and there are probably a score more of notable historical pieces, to show how contemptible were the utmost slaughtering devices of former times when compared with the improvements and progress in civilization which are being so interestingly developed in our day. Their poor solitary specimens sink into absolute insignificance. In the more ordinary course of smaller ware there was the famous brown-bess which maintained its reputation for two hundred years. At first the clumsy match-lock took so long a time in loading, blowing up the match, and going off, that it was not so deadly as was expected; especially as a good deal remained of the casing in armour, such as was worn in chivalrous battle when man met man in brave encounter, and the victory fell to the stoutest or most skilful. In this there was something like manliness and fair play; and the glory of conquest was rarely darkened by the infliction of death. And even where the brown-bess was most advantageously employed and at close quarters, to its credit be it recorded, it is astonishing to think how few were killed in proportion to the ammunition expended!

The vollies were noisy enough-the soldiers were directed to fire low and they seem to have fired not only low but high. They were also warned to put their trust in Providence, and keep their powder dry; but somehow it happened that owing to the promiscuous nature of the fight, few enemies fell to a very liberal allowance of gunpowder.

In the slaughter that was committed in this way, the troops come under the description of mere instruments. They manoeuvred and fired away as they were led and ordered; but they were almost unconscious of the casualities they produced-there was no direct

and distinct action aimed at individual life. Civilization and the progress of science has, however, improved upon this unsatisfactory state of things; and the rifle has superseded the old brown-bess. Instead of the haphazard rattling volley, you have the stealthy rifle with its sharp twang. There is nothing to be seen of "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war," but there is a crack from behind a tree or a bush, and a fellow-creature on the opposite side falls forward in the agonies of death. He has been admirably picked out (covered, as they call it) and most expertly slain; and our sure marksman goes on to shoot as many more as he can discover to aim at; and, having disposed of some ten or a dozen unfortunate persons, in the triumph of success he heedlessly exposes himself, and is brought down by a bullet from an unseen hand, as accurate as his own in the civilized mode of murder which has made brown-bess a laughing stock. In the training now there is Science: Science triumphs in the sights, for all distances, which enable the proficient drill to lay the enemy low as certainly as if his breathing body were a target and his warm heart a bull's eye.

Long ago, and through the ages of raw ignorance, the warriors were at immense trouble in constructing battering rams, and, under the best shelter they could manage, knocking away at the walls of towns in despite of hot pitch and boiling lead poured ruthlessly on their heads, and big stones hurled down upon them by the besieged with a crushing impartiality. Miserable contrivances! Look at the iron-plated rams, as yet only employed on the sea, but speedily to be constructed for land service, and mark the mighty improvement. While it is a question whether the enormous cannon can destroy wholesale the armed fortifications which are to be opposed to them, it is highly satisfactory to know we have such machines, which with a single poke of their beaks can extemporize noyades of splendid efficacy. Those of the sanguinary French revolution were paltry expedients, drowning a few aristocrats or suspects, whom it would have been tedious to guillotine; but our merrymake style of execution is of a grander order. With one blow it staves in the side of a vessel, and in ten minutes every soul of the crew is in eternity. Just as you have seen cruel people plunge a trap with poor mice

under water till dead, so the skilled pilot of the ram, by an exquisite act of seamanship, in a moment sends several hundred human beings, full five fathoms deep, to be seen no more on the face of the wonderfully civilized earth.

War is treated as a game. The shambles have their games, though the marrow-bones and cleavers are almost obsolete. Not so the shambles for mankind. On the contrary the pastimes increase in number and attractiveness; and the most innocent nomenclature is coined for the varieties. A populous city is sacked. How much is expressed in that little word. Thirty thousand men, women, and children are devoted to the brutality of an infuriated soldiery reeking with blood and hot from their own narrow escape from wounds or death. They are let loose to gratify every fiend-passion of lust and revenge upon the miserable inhabitants whose only offence is that they have been forced to endure the cruel tyranny and oppression of that other band which previously commitsted every outrage upon them as their de

fenders. Forlorn hopes and storming are no doubt "suggestive" epithets signifying a vast amount of desperate daring and suffering; but after the "affair" is over, there are only a few hundreds or thousands hors de combat ;-out of the battle, indeed, and dying in hospitals or thrown in their ghastly shapes into bloody graves. Then we hear of "admirable shell practice," almost every bomb scattering the limbs of those among whom it bursts all around its horrid area. And we have a Drumhead Court, at which the wretched foredoomed culprit or culprits are simply arraigned for some disobedience of orders, summarily convicted and immediately hanged, or, as a favour, shot. On a larger scale is the more fatal measure of a Special Commission to try offenders or foes by military law. In plain parlance it is simply a psuedo-irresponsible method of cutting off any number of adversaries whom it would not look well to massacre, poison, or even imprison for the brief period that intervenes between incarceration and natural death.

IT

T sometimes happens that a conception is found to fit a class of facts quite different from that to account for which it was originally framed. This unexpected result, it is well known, is one of the best proofs that a vera causa has been discovered, and in most cases at once raises a tentative hypothesis to the rank of an established law. The temptation, however, to distort or misapprehend facts in the endeavour to push a new conception beyond its proper limits is so strong, that the most extreme care is needed to guard against it. Even when the order of phenomena sought to be explained is of the same kind as that already accounted for, the probabilities are against the proposed extension; when, on the other hand, the new phenomena are extremely unlike the old, the antecedent improbability is so very great as to require evidence of the most undeniable kind to counterbalance it.

The attempt now being made to explain moral and social phenomena by the doctrine of Evolution, is an instance of the effort to apply a hypothesis to a totally new class of facts. While the extreme divergence in the two kinds of facts raises a strong à priori presumption against the success of this attempt, it does not entitle any one to dismiss the project as futile without inquiry; more especially as some who are by no means advocates of Darwinism, although they believe it to have a high degree of probability in its favour, look upon this recent phase of it with qualified approval. The acceptance of Evolution will, in the opinion of Mr. Goldwin Smith,* "render it necessary to rewrite our manuals of Moral Philosophy." If this suggestion at all corresponds to the truth, it is well that we should know it; if, on the other hand, as others believe, it suggests a distrust that is uncalled for, the sooner we hear reasons for coming to that conclusion the better. The question is not, it will be observed, whether the theory of

* CANADIAN MONTHLY, May, 1876, p. 415.

| Evolution is true or false; but whether, assuming its truth, it has any bearing upon Morality. On the former topic the present writer, not being a scientific specialist, does not feel competent to express any authoritative opinion; on the latter he proposes to set down a few thoughts that will, he believes, be found to have some weight.

1. The first point that suggests itself is, whether the theory of Evolution can be shown to affect in any way the truth or falsehood of our moral conceptions. That theory, as originally presented by its author in his great work, The Origin of Species, shows, or attempts to show, that all species of living beings, vegetable and animal, are co-descendants of one or more primordial forms. Different species, in other words, are no more of separate origin than are varieties of the same species. The same influences which have co-operated in producing varieties are competent to account for all the differences of species, without recourse being had to the hypothesis of special creation. These influences are Inheritance, Variability, and External Circumstances. Each living being tends to resemble its immediate or more remote progenitors in certain definite characteristics; it also tends to display individual features that mark it off from all other beings. If we could suppose the conditions of existence absolutely alike for all beings of the same kind, we should have the same type persisting for an indefinite period without any important change. But as all organic beings increase in a geometrical ratio, more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, and a severe struggle for life takes place, usually between beings of the same species, but often between those of distinct species. The relations between living things, determining which shall survive and which shall die, being exceedingly complex, those individuals which chance to display a variation in the least degree more advantageous to their existence than their competitors survive, while