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than by giving evidence that its average disasters as those from which France is now citizens, those whose opinions build up suffering? Is not every peculation which the public life of the State, -value their robbed a single regiment of its full strength own private interests so far more highly now written out, as it were, in the flaming letthan the public interest, that they will cheat ters of burning towns and desolated plains? the State to serve themselves. It is quite Is not every little cheat by which the Army certain that people of this kind do not de- was deprived of Chassepôts for which the serve to belong to a State which exercises a price had been paid, or the Commissariat wide control in foreign affairs, and that they defrauded of what was essential to the take the surest possible means to undermine health and comfort of the soldiery, magnithe very foundations of the controlling fied now into the sort of treason which power. A temperate, frugal, and laborious brings whole nations into mourning and Germany, in which every man really hon- provinces into subjection to a foreign yoke? oured the State as the true organ of what If such lessons as the disasters of the Crimea they call with so much love the "Father- and of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 will land," would have every right to what it not teach how unlimited is the consequence would certainly soon gain, a predominant of every immorality committed against the influence in Western Europe, if its only ri-State, how rapidly the infection of sins vals were a selfishly and unscrupulously mer- against the State, or against any molecule cantile Great Britain, a false and gasconad- of the State, spreads till all its strength is ing France, and an intriguing, wily, pliant Italy. There is no such thing as a great State built up out of a people that is not great. If any sort of corruption pervades public morality, this dry-rot must attack, and sooner or later, as now in France, go far towards ruining the State.

But there is undoubtedly in the present day a very large amount of political corruption which does not imply anything like as great an extent of personal corruption as it would if the same deceptions were practised on private persons; and it is to the extinction of this that we look most hopefully, for when once the morality of a whole nation has become consciously indifferent to the obligations of sincerity and honesty, inveighing against these sins is as unprofitable as the most unprofitable of all the exercises of the pulpit. No Englishman, however, can doubt that there is a great deal of political corruption which does not imply any equivalent amount of personal corruption, and so far, perhaps, a remedy is possible. Surely there is hope of teaching people, teaching children as a part of their ordinary school education, that instead of its being less wrong to cheat a corporation or a public department than it is to cheat an individual, it is, if you can weigh guilt against guilt, a great deal more so? The thinkers of old time used to say that every moral rule was magnified a hundredfold in relation to the State; and it is only the unreality attaching to the State in modern times, the comparative difficulty in realizing the definite wrong inflicted, in seeing exactly who really suffers for your meanness when you cheat a board, or a corporation, or a Government department, that makes it otherwise now. Yet what can illustrate the old axiom better than such

undermined, and it is left a mere name for a rope of sand, what moral lesson can be taught at all? We cannot but believe that it would be quite easy to diffuse a tone of morality in which cheating the State would be regarded as the next thing to blasphemy,

- in fact, as cheating of an infinitely deeper dye, instead of a less guilty kind, than the cheating of individuals. So far, of course, as the mere dishonesty is concerned, there is no choice between cheating an individual and cheating a community. But so far as the consequences go, every man feels that stealing from a poor man is worse than stealing from a rich to the same extent, and that a theft which ruins is worse than a theft the effect of which is hardly perceived. Is it impossible to teach children that stealing from the State is the stealing which ruins, is the stealing from the poor man whose wages form the revenue of the State, — that stealing from a corporation is stealing health and happiness from the population over whose health and happiness that corporation is the sole guardian, that stealing from the army is stealing from the poor men who guard England, that stealing even from the Treasury is stealing from the resources by which the poor combine to procure for themselves a good government, that stealing from any department of the State is the wilful introduction of a most contagious disease which ends in death? One would think nothing easier than to make it evident, even to children, that the peculiar defencelessness of the State, in the deficiency among its guardians of that vivid self-interest which protects private interests, adds, like the helplessness of the blind man against those who would plunder him, a new ignominy to any fraud committed upon it. And if with this be combined the im

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mense area over which fraud against the must be engaged in manufacturing, collectpublic interests spreads, if it spreads at all, ing, and forwarding supplies. The disturband the terrible destruction it breeds, one ance of ordinary life caused by such a movewould suppose it quite possible to sow anew ment must be almost incalculable. We hear in the public the ancient feeling that any of it most from the country districts, because sin of this kind against the organ of the the war began in harvest-time, but the dispeople is really more guilty, instead of less organization must be much greater in the so, than a like sin against an individual. cities, where the youth are in much greater In truth, the religious feeling which substi- proportion. The cities are full of immitutes God for the object of every guilty ac- grants. The drain must, and as we know tion, great or small, while it has done a from a hundred accounts does, involve a great deal to strengthen private morality, partial suspension of energy in all factories, has done a good deal also to weaken foundries, banks, shops, and city establishrelatively the springs of public morality, by ments of every kind, - in all universities, rendering those who have no religious feel-in all mines, and in all but the most necesing, comparatively indifferent to all offences sary operations of agriculture: and much which are not on the face of them produc- of this paralysis must continue for some tive of immediate pain and suffering. Many a man who would not for his life rob a widow or an orphan, will think nothing of robbing a department. Surely it is possible to introduce into elementary schools enough explanation of the result to innumerable more helpless persons than widows and orphans, of robbing departments, the fearful result, too, in the way of making widows and orphans, to inspire all men who have any vestige of moral feeling at all with a certain sense that the State is far more sacred than any individual, that it really represents the strength and shield of millions of individuals, who will be not only less happy, but less noble, less honourable, less just, less generous beings, if the State be once turned to ignoble uses by selfish and vulgar men.

years. The lads just coming on will not begin to be available till 1874, for they must serve their three years in the army, which by that year will be completely renewed, and they will not be really of use till 1876, as they will need at least two years to acquire the necessary knowledge. So far as the soldiers now drawn away fail to return there will be a permanent gap in German life continuing for nearly half a century. There will always be so many less of competent persons of such and such an age in every class from peasants to princes. How great this gap may be cannot as yet be ascertained, the Germans publishing no hospital returns, but in the very best event it cannot be less than a sixth of the whole body employed-200,000 men; it may very well be a fourth-300,000 men; and in the event of defeat, or of a pestilence breaking out, it may very well be half, or 600,000 men. Russia lost more than that in the Crimean War. Moreover, this loss includes an enormously disproportionate number of the highly educated classes. The death-rate WE question if Englishmen are even yet among officers is almost incredibly high, aware of the immensity of the effort made quite double the proper proportion, and as by Germany, or of the extent to which she the Prussian officers are indistinguishable by has staked her future prosperity upon this dress, this must arise from extra forwardwar. She has not, it is true, made a levée ress, in which they would be imitated by the en masse - no nation ever did or could do educated in the ranks. The deaths from that, not even the South in the last year of wounds would be larger too in this class; the American war, for she had still the blacks while the deaths from disease, from bad with whom to plough and reap,- but she food, and from fatigue, would be incomparhas placed in arms, in actual regiments ably greater among them than among the marching or ready to march, her entire hardier peasantry. The harsh though effiyouth, all persons between twenty-one and cient policy which refuses tents in the field, twenty-six, physically competent to bear kills these men off in thousands, while they arms. It is asserted, and we see no reason and they only feel greatly the weight they for doubting, that 1,200,000 youths of every are compelled to carry. Taking all these class in Germany, from the King's eldest son circumstances into consideration, it is not an to the meanest peasant, is engaged in the exaggeration to say that Germany will lose war either in front or in reserve a real a third, perhaps a half, of her cultivated reserve, be it remembered, immediately youth, an immeasurable loss even to a peoready for action; and quite 200,000 more ple among whom every man has some tinc

From The Economist.
THE LOSSES OF GERMANY.

ture of instruction. The whole remainder, | transmitting their cultivation to their debesides, will come back less powerful men scendants. and less fit for the work of life—war, if it does not demoralize, making all other work seem insipid.

So far clearly war is an unmixed evil, and it must be remembered that the great compensations so often claimed for war really Nor is this all. The severe military or- belong exclusively to discipline. That milganization of Germany has modified all hab-itary service improves the physique is cerits until it has become unusual for men to tain. That when an entire nation is trained marry until they have served out their term, and usual to marry shortly after, and the loss therefore falls almost exclusively among the potential bridegrooms of Germany. We can make the effect of this clear in a moment by taking an extreme case. Suppose the whole army to perish, there would between 1870 and 1874 be no youthful marriages at all, and probably two millions less children born into the world—a difference which would be felt for generations. Even as it is, the difference will in all probability be sufficient to arrest the tide of German emigration, and thus to exert a marked influence upon the prosperity of the United States, who gain almost the whole benefit of this outpouring of strong persons ready to labour hard. The general effect of the war, therefore, will be to diminish considerably and at once the population of Germany, to restrict its increase still more considerably, and to inflict the heaviest proportion of both these losses upon the cultivated classes, who have at all times in a country of subdivided properties much difficulty in

it improves the morale is very probable. That it increases incalculably the capacity for strict organization, that is, diminishes incalculably the temptation to waste labour, may be granted, though we think reasoners on that side claim too much. But then all those advantages are due to discipline, not to the war for which it is a preparation, the latter only undoing much of the effect of the previous training. Troops always emerge from a war less healthy, less organized, less moral, than their discipline had made them when they entered it. The notion that war hardens men, that old campaigners live long, is probably a mere delusion, arising from the fact that war acts as a process of selection, and only spares the tough, whose toughness is then attributed to the war which has only revealed its existence. No race of Western Europe, trained to sleep under cover, can sleep without cover for a month under severe rains without suffering, and the soldiers of this war, we may rely upon it, will die early.

It must be confessed that at the present time England presents to the civilized world a spectacle which is less sublime than ridiculous. She is fully prepared to "speak out her instincts," but finds that people are too busy sharpening their swords and cutting each other's throats to listen to her. She has therefore wisely left off scolding and advising, and is now engaged in rubbing her spectacles. She can hardly believe her eyes. She sees in the German army an engine of destruction such as the world has never seen before. A new first-class nation has arisen with a new first-class army, and she is beginning to realize the truth that if she herself intends to be a first-class nation, as of old, she must conform to the new standard, and adopt the latest fashion in armour. It is a sore trial to be thus rudely awakened by Young Europe from dreams of efficiency, economy, competitive examinations and marriage with our deceased wife's sister. Pall Mall Gazette.

WE asked why the Norfolk Island Pine, Araucaria excelsa, -a conservatory plant with us, was made to do duty for the Chili pine, A. imbricata; and we are told in reply that there is a fine specimen of the latter at Dropmore, which is quite true. It is equally true that the artist has drawn A. excelsa, and not A. imbricata; unless, indeed, the same line of defence be adopted as in the case of the man who sold rooks for pheasants, and who, when taxed with it, replied," Appelez-les comme vous voudrez, des corbeaux s'il vous plait; moi, je les appelle des faisans.'

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Athenæum.

THE Ecuador Government has decreed that in the capital and suburbs no house constructed of cane and straw shall be permitted, and that three months after the date of the decree all those existing shall be demolished. There was a former decree to this effect, which is thus fully enforced. Nature.

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