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Eclectic Magazine

FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE IN CENTRAL ASIA.

BY MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY RAWLINSON, K.C.B.

The end in view has been simply to arrive by gradual accretion of territory at the frontier of India. In pursuance of this object Russia has incurred expense without any immediate prospect of return, to an extent which has filled economists with dismay; fifty millions sterling, at least, having been expended by her in Central Asia during the last twenty-five years. Native rights at the same time have been mercilessly trampled on, and, above all, diplomacy has pushed its privilege of deception far beyond the bounds hitherto recognised as legitimate; but success, which condones all such irregularities, has rewarded her efforts, and the crisis has now arrived, almost sooner than was expected.

With this conviction strong on my mind, and with a lively sense of the inconvenience to India of Russian contiguity, is it surprising that I should feel constrained to put the following questions? Ought we to have remained passive while the meshes were thus being woven round us? Ought we not rather to have impeded by all the means at our command the passage of the Russian columns from the Caspian to Merv? There were many such means available. We might have persuaded Persia, whose jealousy was already excited by the movement of the Russian columns along her frontier, to interdict that supply of grain and transport animals from Khorassan which was indispensable to a successful advance. We might have furnished the Tekkehs of Akhal with arms and money to resist the invaders. We might have warned the Russian Government in plain but forcible language that her occupation of Merv would infallibly lead to war. It is impossible, indeed, to acquit ourselves of shortcoming in this respect. It is impossible to avoid the conviction that, by a want of firmness in action as in language, the crisis which now threatens us has been unduly accelerated. I have no wish to reopen old sores, or to revive the acrimonious strife of 1881, when the questions of the evacuation of Candahar and the abandonment of the Quetta railway were debated with the keenness of political disagreement, embittered by the virulence of party feeling; nor, indeed, although strongly advocating at the time the retention of the Western Afghan capital, and believing as I still do that Russia was mainly encouraged to advance on Merv by our retirement from Candahar, am I at all insensible to the solid advantages which resulted from the adoption by the Government of the day of an opposite course of action. I freely admit three distinct sources of gain. Firstly, the considerable expense of maintaining an independent government in Candahar for the last four years has been saved to the public treasury; secondly, we have avoided local friction with the D?r?n? population, which might have seriously hampered us under present circumstances; and, thirdly, we have succeeded during the interval in maintaining friendly relations with the Amir of Cabul, a result which, according to the best authorities--I refer especially to Sir Lepel Griffin's statement on this head--would have been impossible had he been subjected to the constant sense of humiliation, as well as to the pecuniary loss, occasioned by the dismemberment of his kingdom and the continued presence of a British garrison at Candahar. Yet, admitting the value of such results, I cannot but think them a poor compensation for the cramped position, both military and political, in which we now find ourselves. At any rate, if we were at present established in strength at Candahar as we were in 1881, with the railway completed to that town from Sibi, and with a small detachment occupying Girishk on the Helmend, the improvement in our military position would be at least equivalent to an additional force of 20,000 men in line should hostilities really supervene with Russia, whilst the relations we should have been able to establish during the interval with the Haz?reh and Parsiw?n section of the population--relations which must in the future constitute our chief element of strength in the country--would have rendered us almost indifferent to the jealousy and opposition of the Afghans.

Having thus disposed of all preliminary matter, I now take up the frontier question, from which arises our present acute misunderstanding with Russia. Oriental states have notoriously elastic and fluctuating frontiers, and Afghanistan is no exception to the general rule. At different periods, indeed, since the institution of the kingdom of Cabul by Ahmed Shah in 1747, the Afghan power has extended on one side to Cashmire, on another to Deregez in Khorassan, while to the south it has stretched into Beluchistan and even to the frontiers of Sinde. More frequently of late years it has been circumscribed within much narrower dimensions, and has moreover been disintegrated and broken up into three distinct chiefships. The normal condition of the kingdom may be considered to be such as it presented on Shir Ali Khan's accession to power in 1868, Herat and Candahar being united to Cabul, and the seat of government being established at the eastern capital. It was shortly after this, in 1872, that, on the invitation of Russia, who had already brought Bokhara under her influence, and was exercising a tutelary direction of her affairs, we undertook, in the interests of Shir Ali Khan, to specify the northern districts over which we considered that he was entitled to claim jurisdiction, the object being thus to define a frontier between the Afghans and Uzbegs, which should obviate in the future all risk of collision or misunderstanding. As Russia at that time had no relations whatever with the Turcomans of Merv, it is not very obvious why it should have been thought necessary to protract the Afghan frontier beyond the Bokhara limit to the west of the Oxus. Perhaps the object especially was to protect the Afghan-Uzbeg states of Andekh?d and Mymeneh, which in the time of Dost Mohammed Khan had been subject to Bokhara. Perhaps Russia already contemplated the absorption of Merv, and foresaw that all territory outside of the Afghan boundary would naturally fall into her own hands. At any rate, the memorandum of 1872, better known as the Granville-Gortchakoff arrangement, after defining the Bokhara frontier as far as Khjoa Saleh on the Oxus, went on to name, as districts to be included in Shir Ali's dominions, "Akcheh, Sir-i-P?l, Mymeneh, Shilberg?n, and Andekh?d, the latter of which would be the extreme Afghan possession to the north-west, the desert beyond belonging to independent tribes of Turcomans;" and further: "The Western Afghan frontier between the dependencies of Herat and those of the Persian province of Khorassan is well known and need not be defined." Now, however much it may be regretted that this memorandum, which was evidently drawn up as a mere basis for negotiation, and not as a formal declaration of territorial rights, was not more explicit in defining the trace of the line, and especially in marking the points at which it would cross the Murgh?b and abut on the Heri-r?d, it did at any rate establish two main points of geographical interest. In the first place, it clearly distinguished between the independent Turcoman desert to the north and the Afghan hilly country to the south; and in the second place it naturally, and as a matter of course, assigned to Afghanistan the "dependencies of Herat" to the west of the Murgh?b, which dependencies again were divided, it was said, from Persian territory by the "well-known" boundary of the Heri-r?d.

The terms of this agreement were in February 1873 formally accepted by Russia; and, faulty and irregular as the document is from a diplomatic point of view, it has quieted all frontier agitation between the Oxus and Heri-r?d for the last ten years, and would have served the same purpose for another ten years in advance but for the unfortunate intrusion of Russia into the controversy as a sequel to her conquest of Merv.

Now, it is quite evident that in the earlier stages of these frontier discussions the Russian Foreign Office understood the provisions of the 1872-3 arrangement, which were held to govern the later negotiation, in their natural and common-sense acceptation. The principle of a distinction between plain and hill was fully recognised, and the phrase "dependencies of Herat" was held necessarily to include the province of Badgheis, a tract which extended from the Paropamisus range to Serakhs, and which had been a dependency of Herat from the time of the Arab conquest. The line on which the commissioners were to be engaged is thus everywhere spoken of by M. de Giers and M. Zinovieff in the preliminary negotiations as a direct line from Khoja Saleh to Serakhs, or to the neighborhood of Serakhs, and there is no hint of any deflection of the line to the south. After the annexation of Merv, however, and especially after M. Lessar had perambulated Badgheis and made a careful study of the valleys of the Kushk and Murgh?b rivers, larger views appear to have dawned upon the Russian authorities. Geographical and ethnological conditions were then invented that had never been thought of before. It was discovered that the Paropamisus range was the true natural boundary of Herat to the north, that the district of Badgheis, which lay beyond the range, had been absolved from its allegiance to Herat by efflux of time, Afghan jurisdiction having been suspended during the Turcoman raids which had desolated the district for above fifty years; above all, it was asserted that the Saryk Turcomans who dwelt at Penj-deh and in the valley of the Kushk, well within the Afghan border, must be registered as Russian subjects, because another detachment of the same tribe, who dwelt at Yolatan, beyond the desert and near Merv, had proffered their allegiance to the Czar. Questions of principle of such grave moment, it was further stated, required to be settled by the two European Governments before the commissioners could enter on their duties, and General Zelenoi was accordingly, without further explanation or apology, sent to rusticate at Teflis, regardless of the public convenience or of the respect due to his colleague, who had been waiting for him for four months on the Murgh?b with an escort of 500 men and a large gathering of attendants and camp-followers.

The abrupt and discourteous manner in which Russia gave effect to her altered views, by withdrawing her commissioner, was not calculated to improve the prospect of an amicable settlement. Other graver matters, too, soon supervened. Before General Lumsden had arrived at the Heri-r?d, Russia had pushed forward a patrol to P?l-i-Khat?n, about fifty miles south of Serakhs, thus occupying one of the points on which the Commission would have had to adjudicate; and subsequently she extended her advance still further into the "debateable" land, placing a strong post at Ak Rob?t, in the very centre of Badgheis, so as to cut off from the Afghans a famous salt lake which supplies the whole country with salt as far as Meshed and Askabad, and was thus a valuable source of revenue; and also taking possession of the pass and ruined fort of Zulfic?r, fifty miles south of P?l-i-Khat?n, where one of the favorite tracks of the old Turcoman raiders crossed the Heri-r?d, and where an Afghan picket was already stationed. This last aggression, which was later sought to be justified by Russia on the ground of retaliation for an unauthorised Afghan advance on the Murgh?b, brought the outposts of the two nations into immediate contact, and would certainly at the time have caused a collision but for General Lumsden's urgent remonstrances. On the Murgh?b, too, affairs were equally critical. As long ago as 1883, before the appointment of a frontier commission was ever thought of, the Amir of Cabul, alarmed by the Russian proceedings at Merv, had established a strong military post at Bala Murgh?b, in the Jamsh?d? country, and about fifty miles short of the Saryk settlement at Penj-deh. This was a purely military precaution, with no political significance, and could give offence to no one. In March of the following year, however, the situation was a good deal altered. Owing to a visit from M. Lessar, who came from Merv for the express purpose of testing the fidelity of the Saryk Turcomans to the Amir of Cabul, and who was generally regarded as the forerunner of a Russian advance, so much alarm was created in the neighborhood that application was made to the commandant at Bala Murgh?b to send a detachment of his troops to Penj-deh for the protection of the Saryk tribesmen; and it was fortunate that this requisition was complied with, for otherwise the chances are that the Afghans would have lost the place, as the Russians were actually preparing to attack it.

The importance of this incident of the Afghan occupation of Penj-deh has been a good deal exaggerated by Russian partisans, who claim that the "debateable" land reserved for the adjudication of the commissioners was thus first invaded by the Afghans; but in reality, as will be presently explained in detail, no question had ever been raised in the country as to Penj-deh being outside the jurisdiction of Herat, previous to M. Lessar's visit in March 1884, and the Cabul commander at Bala Murgh?b, in ignorance of the appointment of a commission in Europe to consider any such question, naturally and properly supposed that he was merely carrying out an arrangement of internal police in strengthening his northern outpost. As it afterwards turned out, however, Russia attached the greatest importance to this obscure position of Penj-deh. Colonel Alikhanoff, indeed, always preferring action to negotiation, made an attempt to seize it with a detachment from Merv a few months after its occupation by the Afghans, and only desisted when he found that he must fight for its possession. There have been since repeated demonstrations of attack from the northward, and at the present moment it is the point where a collision between Russians and Afghans is most to be apprehended, the Saryks of Yolatan under Russian orders holding P?l-i-Khishti on the Kushk river, while the Saryks of Penj-deh under Afghan orders hold the neighboring position of Ak Tepeh, within half a mile's distance, at the junction of the Kushk and Murgh?b, and peace being only kept between the rival parties by the presence of our assistant commissioner, Colonel Ridgeway, who has been directed by Sir P. Lumsden to watch the frontier with an escort of fifty lancers, as long as he can with safety remain.

It must now be noted, that while local proceedings of this grave character have been taking place on the Murgh?b, diplomacy in Europe has not been idle. When Russia decided not to send her commissioner to the frontier pending our acceptance of the new principles which were to govern the negotiation, she proposed for our consideration a zone of arbitration within the limits of which the boundary line was to be drawn. Negotiations on this subject are still proceeding, but no definite arrangement has been yet arrived at.

It must be patent to all the world that if Russia were pursuing a really honest policy, and were not striving to make a bargain especially favorable to her own interests, she would leave the delimitation commission to decide, according to evidence obtained on the spot, what was meant in the arrangement of 1872-3 by drawing a distinction between the Afghan hilly district and the Turcoman desert, as well as what extent of territory ought to be fairly included within "the dependencies of Herat." On these points, which constitute the real difficulties of the situation, I now propose to make a few general remarks, repeating the arguments in favor of the Afghan claims which I have already submitted to the public in another place.

The boundaries of Badgheis seem to have fluctuated according to the power of the neighboring states, and it is not always easy to verify the notices of the geographers, owing to the disappearance of the old names. Still, it is important to note that Hafiz Abr?, who was a minister of Herat under Shah R?kh, states categorically that Badgheis was bounded on the west by the Persian districts of Jam and Serakhs, thus proving that, at any rate at that period, the district extended northward up to the confines of the desert. To the east Badgheis was frequently made to include Merv-er-R?d , Penj-deh, Baghsh?r , Ba?n or Bavan , and the entire valley of the Kushk river, while to the south it was separated from the plain of Herat, as at present, by a range of hills , the prolongation of the great Paropamisus. Such being the concurrent testimony of all writers as to the configuration of the country in antiquity, and Badgheis being so intimately connected with Herat as is the Campagna with Rome, it is difficult to understand on what grounds it can now be excluded from Afghan territory as indicated in the memorandum of 1872. The argument that neither Dost Mohammed Khan, nor Shir Ali Khan, nor even Abdur Rahman Khan until quite lately, exercised any effective jurisdiction in the district, or held it in military subjection, is certainly of no value; for this condition of recent possession, which at one time did really govern the distribution, was specially excluded from consideration in determining claims to Afghan nationality by Prince Gortchakoff's letter of the 19th of December, 1872; and it would be a monstrous aggravation of the original outrage if the Turcomans, who had rendered Badgheis uninhabitable for fifty years, were, in virtue of their forcible interruption of Afghan government, to become themselves the legal owners of the country.

And now with regard to the other point at issue between Russia and ourselves--the dependency of Penj-deh, which, being situated on the Murgh?b, just before the river issues from the hills, should belong geographically to Afghanistan, and which, moreover, is at least forty miles south of a direct line drawn from Serakhs to Khoja Seleh on the Oxus--a brief summary of its history would seem to be required. In antiquity Penj-deh was a mere suburb of the great city of Merver-R?d, now marked by the ruins of Ak-tepeh. Formed, according to the geographer Yac?t, of five separate villages on the river Murgh?b, which had been gradually consolidated into a single township under Malik Shah, it was at the time of Yac?t's visit, in A.H. 617, one of the most flourishing places in Khorassan. Shortly afterwards it was ruined by the Mongols, and a second time it was devastated by Timour, but under his successors, and especially during the reigns of Shah R?kh and Sultan Hussein Mirza, it again rose to a state of great prosperity, and ever since, except during some brief intervals of foreign dominion, it has remained in close dependency on Herat. When Ahmed Shah Abdalli, on the death of Nadir in 1747, established the kingdom of Cabul, the Kushk and Murgh?b valleys were held by Eym?k tribes, Haz?rehs, F?rozkoh?s, and Jamsh?d?s, who cultivated the lower lands along the rivers and pastured their flocks over the downs of Badgheis, unmixed with either Afghans or Turcomans, but paying revenue to Herat in common with all the other tribes who inhabited the ranges of the Paropamisus.

It remains now to consider the prospect before us in regard to this momentous alternative of peace or war. To those who, like myself, have watched the cautious and consistent proceedings of Russia in Central Asia since the close of the Crimean war, with a growing presentiment of evil, but still not without a certain admiration of such determined policy and a warm approval in many cases of the results, the immediate future presents no special features of mystery or alarm. The occupation of Merv and the incorporation in the Russian Empire of the vast hordes who roam the steppes from the Caspian to the Oxus was but the crowning act of a long series of costly but tentative enterprises, all leading up to the same much-desired consummation. The threshold of India was reached. Russian Turcomania was now conterminous with British Afghanistan, and it only remained to give effect to the situation in the manner most conducive to Russian interests. It must be understood, then, that in all the recent discussions between London and St. Petersburg regarding lines of frontier, work of the Commission, relations with the tribes, &c., Russia, in prosecution of those interests, has been guided by three distinct considerations, all aiming at the strengthening of her position in view to future pressure upon England. Firstly, she requires the best strategical base available for immediate demonstration against Herat. As far as actual attack is concerned, her power would be as formidable if launched from Serakhs or Merv as if she had already advanced half-way to Herat and were encamped at Zulfic?r and Chemen-i-b?d; but in respect to a passive but continued pressure, no doubt her best position would be on the northern skirts of the hills which divide Badgheis from Herat, and in full command of the upper valley of the Kushk. Hence her desire to possess a boundary line from Zulfic?r on the Heri-r?d by Chemen-i-b?d to Meruchek on the Murgh?b, and hence the persistency with which she clings to this line, even at the risk of actual conflict. Secondly, she requires the full command of the Murgh?b and Kushk valleys, not only because the most direct, and by far the most commodious, road to Herat from her northern base, the Caspian and Askabad, leads by Merv and Penj-deh, but also because Penj-deh dominates the communication between Herat and Afghan Turkestan, and would be thus of the greatest strategical importance in the event of war between Russia and Cabul. Hence the insistence with which she clings to Penj-deh and the boldness she has shown in enveloping the place with her troops, hoping, as it would seem, to redeem Alikhanoff's former failure to obtain peaceful possession by now provoking a disturbance between the Saryks and Afghans which shall justify her own forcible interposition. And, thirdly, in regard to the Saryks of Penj-deh, it should be clearly understood that it is not the tribesmen that Russia principally cares about, but the lands which they occupy. She is tempting them, no doubt, to declare in her favor by every means in her power, and she ostentatiously displays before them the bait that she has now occupied Badgheis as far as Ak Rob?t, and thus commands the Salt Lake and the pastures which they have hitherto enjoyed as Afghan tenants; but if the Afghans were to resume occupation of Badgheis, and the Saryks were to offer, nevertheless, to migrate to Merv or the Tejend, it is doubtful whether she would receive them. The whole controversy, indeed, may be regarded as a sham, or at best a means to an end, the possession of Penj-deh being the real object aimed at, on account of its affording such a convenient basis for threatening, or even for attacking, Herat.

The measures which Russia has taken to carry out the above objects are of a very grave significance. Although it is known that we have already recognised the validity of the Afghan claim to Badgheis and Penj-deh, and are, moreover, pledged to support by our arms the Amir of Cabul, Abdur Rahman Khan, in the event of an unprovoked aggression on his territory by a foreign enemy, she has, on the mere ground apparently that she contests his claim to these districts, advanced her troops as far as Zulfic?r, Ak Rob?t, and P?l-i-Khishti. She has, in fact, as matters stand at present, superseded the work of the commission. She has arbitrarily drawn up a line of frontier deciding all the moot points of jurisdiction in her own favor; and by her military dispositions she has given evidence that she intends to uphold this territorial distribution by force of arms. We have in the meantime done all that was possible with honor to avert hostilities. We have refused to abandon the hope of a settlement of the frontier dispute through the agency of the delimitation commission, and we have in various ways stretched conciliation to the utmost, merely requiring that no further advance shall be made into the debateable land by the pickets or patrols on either side, pending negotiation. Although no formal arrangement to this effect has been agreed to, orders have been issued to the Russian commanders on the spot, and a sort of truce of a very temporary character has been thus established; but what is to be the outcome of this strained position of affairs? The truce cannot be prolonged indefinitely, and in the meantime any chance collision between Cossack and Afghan patrols may set the whole country in a blaze, for considerable reinforcements are said to be marching on Penj-deh both from Merv and from Herat, and there is much exasperation of feeling upon either side.

BY EMILE DE LAVELEYE.

A CRITICISM OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER.

"La nature est l'injustice m?me."--RENAN.

The eminent philosopher's statement, that in most civilized countries governments are more and more adopting this course, is indisputable. In England Parliament is taking the lead; in Germany Prince Bismarck, in spite of Parliament; and elsewhere either Parliament or town councils are doing the same thing. Mr. Spencer considers that this effort for the improvement of the condition of the working-classes, which is being everywhere made, with greater or less energy, is a violation of natural laws, which will not fail to bring its own punishment on nations, thus misguided by a blind philanthropy. I believe, on the contrary, that this effort, taken as a whole, and setting aside certain mistaken measures, is not only in strict accordance with the spirit of Christianity, but is also in conformity with the true principles of politics and of political economy.

Let us first consider a preliminary question, on which I accept Mr. Spencer's views, but for different reasons from his: On what are individual rights founded, and what are the limits of State power? Mr. Spencer refutes with pitiless logic the opinions of those who, with Bentham, maintain that individual rights are State concessions, or who, like Matthew Arnold, deny the existence of natural rights. The absurdity of Bentham's system is palpably evident. Who creates the government? The people, says he. So the government, thus created, creates rights, and then, having created rights, it confers them on the separate members of the sovereign people, by which it was itself created. The real truth is, that government defines and sanctions rights, and employs the public strength to enforce their being respected, but the rights themselves existed before.

In every country, and at all times, an order of things may be conceived--civil, political, penal and administrative laws--which would best conform to the general interest, and be the most favorable to the well-being and progress of the nation. This order of things is not the existing one. If it were, one might say, with the optimists, that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and a demand for any amelioration would be a rebellion against natural laws, and an absurdity. But this order of things may be caught sight of by reason, and defined with more or less accuracy by science; hence its name of rational order. If I ask for free trade in France, for a better division of property in England, and for greater liberty in Russia, I do so in the name of this rational order, as I believe that these changes would increase men's happiness.

This theory permits of our tracing a limit between individual liberty and State power.

Mr. Herbert Spencer proves very clearly that there are certain things which no man would ever choose to abandon to State power; his religious convictions, for instance. On the other hand, all would agree that the State should accept the charge of protecting frontiers and punishing theft and murder, that is to say, the maintaining of peace and security at home and abroad; only here, like most Englishmen, Mr. Herbert Spencer invokes human will. Find out, he says, on the one hand, what the great majority of mankind would choose to reserve to an individual sphere of action, and, on the other, what they would consent to abandon to State decisions, and you will then be able to fix the limit of the power of public authority.

I cannot myself admit that human will is the source of rights. Until quite recently, in all lands, slavery was considered a necessary and legitimate institution. But did this unanimous opinion make it any more a right? Certainly not. It is in direct opposition to the order of things which would be best for the general welfare; it cannot, therefore, be a right.

Until the sixteenth century, with the exception of a few Anabaptists who were burnt at the stake, all believed that the State ought to punish heretics and atheists. But this general opinion did not suffice to justify the intolerance then practised. The following line of argument, I think, would be most in keeping with individual interests, and, consequently, with the interests of society in general: A certain portion of men's acts ought not to be in any way subject to sovereign authority, be it republican or monarchical. But what is to be the boundary of this inviolable domain of individual activity? The will of the majority, or even of the entire population, is not competent to trace it, for history has proved but too often how gross have been the errors committed in such instances. This limit can, therefore, only be fixed by science, which, at each fresh progress in civilization, can discover and proclaim aloud where State power should cease to interfere. Sociological science, for instance, announces that liberty of conscience should always be respected as man's most sacred possession, and because religious advancement is only to be achieved at this price; that true property, or, in other words, the fruit of personal labor, must not be tampered with, or labor would be discouraged and production would diminish; that criminals must not go unpunished, but that justice be strictly impartial, so that the innocent be not punished with the guilty.

It would not be at all impossible to draw up a formula of these essential rights, which M. Thiers called necessary liberties, and which are already inscribed in the constitutions of America, England, France, Belgium, Holland, and all other free nations. It is sometimes very difficult to know where to set bounds to individual liberty, in the interests of public order and of the well-being of others; and it is true, of course, that either the king, the assembly, or the people enacts the requisite laws, but if science has clearly demonstrated a given fact it imposes itself. When certain truths have been frequently and clearly explained, they come to be respected. The evidence of them forms the general opinion, and this engenders laws.

To be brief, I agree with Mr. Herbert Spencer that, contrary to Rousseau's doctrine, State power ought to be limited, and that a domain should be reserved to individual liberty which should be always respected; but the limits of this domain should be fixed, not by the people, but by reason and science, keeping in view what is best for the public welfare.

This brings me to the principal question I desire to treat. I am of opinion that the State should make use of its legitimate powers of action for the establishment of greater equality among men, in proportion to their personal merits, and I believe that this would be in conformity, not only with its mission properly speaking, but also with rational rights, with the progress of humanity; in a word, with all the rights and all the interests invoked by Mr. Herbert Spencer.

"Throughout the rest of its life each adult gets benefit in proportion to merit, reward in proportion to desert, merit and desert being understood as ability to fulfil all the requirements of life. Placed in competition with members of its own species, and in antagonism with members of other species, it dwindles and gets killed off, or thrives and propagates, according as it is ill-endowed or well-endowed. If the benefits received by each individual were proportionate to its inferiority, if, as a consequence, multiplication of the inferior was furthered and multiplication of the superior hindered, progressive degradation would result, and eventually the degenerated species would fail to hold its ground in presence of antagonistic species and competing species."

"The poverty of the incapable, the distress that comes upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and the shouldering aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many 'in shallows and in miseries,' are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence."

When the State, guided by a wrongly inspired philanthropy, prevents the application of this wise law, instead of diminishing suffering it increases it. "It tends to fill the world with those to whom life will bring most pain, and tends to keep out of it those to whom life will bring most pleasure. It inflicts positive misery, and prevents positive happiness."

The law that Mr. Herbert Spencer desires society to adopt is simply Darwin's law--"the survival of the fittest." Mr. Spencer expresses his astonishment that at the present day, more than at any other period of the world's history, everything is done to favor the survival of the unfittest, when, at the same time, the truth as revealed by Darwin, is admitted and accepted by an ever-growing number of educated and influential people!

I have endeavored to give a brief sketch of the line of argument followed by Mr. Herbert Spencer. We will now see what reply can be made to it. I think one chief point ought not to have escaped the eminent writer. It is this: If the application of the Darwinian law to the government of societies be really justifiable, is it not strange that public opinion, not only in England, but in all other countries, is so strenuously opposed to it, at an epoch which is becoming more and more enlightened, and when sociological studies are pursued with so much interest? If the intervention of public power for the improvement of the condition of the working-classes be a contradiction of history, and a return to ancient militant society, how is it that the country in which the new industrial organization is the most developed--that is to say, England--is also the country where State intervention is the most rapidly increasing, and where opinion is at the same time pressing for these powers of interference to be still further extended? There is no other land in which the effort to succor outcasts and the needy poor occupies so large a portion of the time and means of the well-to-do and of the public exchequer; there is nowhere else to be found a poor-law which grants assistance to even able-bodied men; nowhere else would it ever have been even suggested to attack free contract, and consequently the very first principles of proprietorship, as the Irish Land Bill has done; and nowhere else would a Minister have dared to draw up a programme of reforms such as those announced by Mr. Chamberlain at the Liberal Reform Club at Ipswich . On the Continent all this would be looked upon as rank socialism. If, then, as a country becomes more civilized and enlightened it shows more inclination to return to what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls militant organization, and to violate the Darwinian law applied to human society, may we not be led to conclude that this so-called retrogression is really progress? This conclusion would very easily explain what Mr. Herbert Spencer designates as the "wheeling round" of the Liberal party with which he so eloquently reproaches them.

Why did the Liberals formerly do their utmost to restrict State power? Because this power was then exercised in the interests of the upper classes and to the detriment of the lower. To mention but one example: When, in former times, it was desired to fix a scale of prices and wages, it was with a view to preventing their being raised, while, to-day, there is a clamor for a lessening of hours of labor with increased remuneration. Why do Liberals now wish to add to the power and authority of the State? To be able to ameliorate the intellectual, moral, and material condition of a greater number of citizens. There is no inconsistency in their programme; the object in view, which is the great aim of all civilization, has been always the same--to assure to each individual liberty and well-being in proportion to his merit and activity!

For natural laws, and especially the law of the survival of the fittest, to become established, it would be necessary to annihilate the immense existing edifice of legislation, and to return to the wild state of society when primitive men lived, in all probability, much as do animals, with no possessions, no successions, no protection of the weak by the State.

Those who, with Mr. Spencer and Haeckel and other Conservative evolutionists, are anxious to see the law of the survival of the fittest and of natural selection adopted in human society, do not realize that the animal kingdom and social organization are two such totally different domains that the same law, applied to each, would produce wholly opposite effects. Mr. Herbert Spencer gives an admirable description of the manner in which natural selection is accomplished among animals:--

This is the ideal order of things which, we are told, ought to prevail in human societies, but everything in our present organization is wholly opposed to any such conditions. An old and sickly lion captured a gazelle; his younger and stronger brother arrives, snatches away his prize, and lives to perpetuate the species; the old one dies in the struggle, or is starved to death. Such is the beneficent law of the "survival of the fittest," It was thus among barbarian tribes. But could such a law exist in our present social order? Certainly not! The rich man, feebly constituted and sickly, protected by the law, enjoys his wealth, marries and has offspring, and if an Apollo of herculean strength attempted to take from him his possessions, or his wife, he would be thrown into prison, and were he to attempt to practise the Darwinian law of selection, he would certainly run a fair risk of the gallows, for this law may be briefly expressed as follows: Room for the mighty, for might is right. It will be objected that in industrial societies the quality the most deserving of recompense, and which indeed receives the most frequent reward, is not the talent of killing one's fellow-man, but an aptitude for labor and producing. But at the present time is this really so? Stuart Mill says that from the top to the bottom of the social ladder remuneration lessens as the work accomplished increases. I admit that this statement may be somewhat exaggerated, but, I think, no one will deny that it contains a large amount of truth. Let us but cast our eyes around us, and we see everywhere those who do nothing living in ease and even opulence, while the workers who have the hardest labor to perform, who toil from night to morning in mines, or unhealthy workshops, or on the sea in tempests, in constant danger of death, are paid, in exchange for all these hardships, a salary hardly sufficient for their means of subsistence, and which, just now, has become smaller and smaller, in consequence of the ever-recurring strikes, and the necessary closing of so many factories, mines, &c., owing to the long-continued depression of trade. What rapid fortunes have been made by stock-broking manoeuvres, by trickeries in supplying goods, by sending unseaworthy vessels to sea to become the coffins of their crews! Do not such sights as these urge the partisans of progress to demand the State's interference in favor of the classes who receive so inadequate a payment for their labors?

It follows, therefore, that those who wish to see the law of natural selection, by the transmission of hereditary aptitudes, established amongst us should begin by demanding the abolition of hereditary succession.

Among animals, the vitiation of the race through the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented "by the fighting so universal in the pairing season." In the social order the accumulation and hereditary transmission of wealth effectually impede the process of perfecting the race. In Greece after the athletic sports, or in those fortunate and chimerical days of which the Troubadours sang, "the most beautiful was sometimes given as a prize to the most valiant;" but, in our prosaic age, rank and fortune too often triumph over beauty, strength, and health. In the animal world, the destiny of each one is decided by its personal qualities. In society, a man attains a high position, or marries a beautiful woman, because he is of high birth, or wealthy, although he may be ugly, lazy, and extravagant. The permanent army and the navy would also have to be destroyed, before the Darwinian law could triumph. Conscription on the Continent and enlistment in England condemn many of the strongest and most warlike men to enforced celibacy; and, as they are subjected to exceptional dangers in the way of hazardous expeditions and wars, the death-rate is far higher amongst them than it would be under ordinary circumstances. In pre-historic times, or in a general way, such men would certainly have begotten offspring, as being the strongest and most apt to survive; in our societies, they are decimated or condemned to celibacy.

Having borrowed from orthodox political economy the notion that it would suffice to put a check on inopportune State intervention for the reign of justice to become established, Mr. Herbert Spencer proceeds to demonstrate that the legislators who enacted the poor-law, and all recent and present law-makers "who have made regulations which have brought into being a permanent body of tramps, who ramble from union to union, and which maintain a constant supply of felons by sending back convicts into society under such conditions that they are almost compelled again to commit crimes," are alone responsible for the sufferings of the working-classes. But may we not blame law-makers, or, rather, our own social order, for measures more fatal in their results than either of these--for instance, the law which concentrates all property into the hands of a few owners? Some years ago, Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote some lines on this subject which are the most severe indictment against the present social order that has ever fallen from the pen of a really competent writer:--

"Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects of their desires--given a world adapted to the gratification of those desires--a world into which such beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of this world. For if each of them 'has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other,' then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, provided he allows all others the same liberty. And, conversely, it is manifest that no one or part of them may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from similarly using it, seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest, and, consequently, to break the law. Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. On examination, all existing titles to such property turn out to be invalid; those founded on reclamation inclusive. It appears that not even an equal apportionment of the earth amongst its inhabitants could generate a legitimate proprietorship. We find that, if pushed to its ultimate consequences, a claim to exclusive possession of the soil involves a land-owning despotism. We further find that such a claim is constantly denied by the enactments of our legislature. And we find, lastly, that the theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil is consistent with the highest civilization; and that, however difficult it may be to embody that theory in fact, equity sternly commands it to be done."

"By-and-by, men may learn that to deprive others of their rights to the use of the earth is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties."

Has Mr. Herbert Spencer changed his opinions as to the proprietorship of the soil since these lines were written? Not at all, for, in the chapter entitled "The Coming Slavery," he writes that "the movement for land-nationalization is aiming at a system of land-tenure equitable in the abstract." But if society, in depriving numbers of persons of their right of co-heirship of the soil, has "committed a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties," ought it not, in common justice, to endeavor to repair the injury done? The help given by public assistance compensates very feebly for the advantages they are deprived of. In his important book, "La Propri?t? Sociale," M. Alfred Fouill?e, examining the question from another standpoint, very accurately calls this assistance "la justice reparative." The numerous and admirable charitable organizations which exist in England, the keen emotion and deep commiseration manifested when the little pamphlet, "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," was first published, the growing preoccupation of Government with the condition of the working-classes, must be attributed, in the first instance certainly to Christian feeling, but also, in a great measure, to a clearer perception of certain ill-defined rights possessed by those who have been kept deprived of national or rather communal co-heirship. Mr. Herbert Spencer has expressed this idea so closely and eloquently that I hope I may be allowed to quote the passage:--

"We must not overlook the fact that, erroneous as are these poor-law and communist theories, these assertions of a man's right to maintenance and of his right to have work provided for him, they are nevertheless nearly related to a truth. They are unsuccessful efforts to express the fact that whoso is born on this planet of ours thereby obtains some interest in it--may not be summarily dismissed again--may not have his existence ignored by those in possession. In other words, they are attempts to embody that thought which finds its legitimate utterance in the law: All men have equal rights to the use of the earth.... After getting from under the grosser injustice of slavery, men could not help beginning in course of time to feel what a monstrous thing it was that nine people out of ten should live in the world on sufferance, not having even standing room save by allowance of those who claim the earth's surface."

The true instinct of humanity has ever so understood social organization that property is the indispensable basis of the family, and a necessary condition of freedom. To prevent any one individual from being deprived of a share in the soil, which was in primitive ages considered to be the collective property of the tribe, it was subjected to periodical divisions; these, indeed, still take place in the Swiss Allmend, in some Scottish townships, in the greater part of Java, and in the Russian Mir.

This passage ought to be transcribed at the commencement of every treatise on social science as the supreme aim of all sociological research; only the delusion, borrowed from the old political economy, which consists in the belief that this dictum of science and Christianity is in practice in our midst, ought to be suppressed.

Is it not a fact that, everywhere, those who can prove by authentic documents that, for centuries past, their ancestors have thriven in idleness are the richest, the most powerful, the most sought after? Only at some future date will this dictum of science and Christianity be brought to bear on our social organization, and our descendants will then establish an order of things which will create economic responsibility, and ensure to each the integral enjoyment of the produce of his labor. The difficult but necessary work of sociology is to endeavor to discover what this organization should be, and to prepare its advent. Mr. Shaw Lefevre's speech shows very clearly the road that ought to be taken.

"What do you mean by the nation? Do you refer to the most miserable of the inhabitants of the land? If so, we are indeed the nation. Look at our pale and emaciated faces, our bodies worn our with over-fatigue and insufficient food. We sow and reap corn, but never taste white bread; we cultivate the vine, but a drop of wine never touches our lips. We raise cattle, but never eat meat; we are covered with rags, we live in wretched hovels; in winter we suffer from the cold, and both winter and summer from the pangs of hunger. Can a land which does not provide its inhabitants, who are willing to work, with sufficient to live upon, be considered by them as a fatherland?"

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